51–60 of 86 posts
Where does Intel get their codenames from?
Landmarks in Oregon, the design team is based in Oregon and gets to choose the names.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Landmarks in Oregon, the design team is based in Oregon and gets to choose the names.
It's not just Oregon. Haswell (4th Gen) is based off of Haswell, CO (Intel has a presence in Fort Collins, CO) and Kaby Lake (8th gen) is based off a lake in Canada.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't comparing TSMC to Intel process nodes like comparing apples to oranges?
It's more one kind of apple to another. They're both process nodes, with certain minor-ish differences here and there. TSMC calls theirs 7 nm, Intel calls theirs 10 nm. Their performance characteristics might be around the same. In practice... who knows. We do know that Intel's current 10 nm CPUs are pretty much broken ~ best they could currently do was useless laptop-grade 2.5 GHz dual-core with no functional iGPU.…
I use to own an i740 way back in the day, and my cousin even worked on that video driver. With nVidia's buy out of 3Dfx and PowerVR pretty much only doing mobile phones/tablets, it'd be nice to see a 3rd player in the nVidia/AMD space again.
I know Matrox still exists, but for what I can tell, they just make cards for 10~20 monitor setups (kiosks, stores, airports, etc).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the way they measure size is different
Ah. What confused me was the word “process” which typically refers to the stack of things that take a high level description of a circuit and turn it into instructions for the machine to execute to make the wafer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intel had two advantages: 1. Relentless process improvement, putting them 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else. 2. Using their monopoly to prevent OEMs from shipping AMD processors. #1 isn't true anymore. #2 is almost irrelevant since mobile has taken over and makes the PC revolution look like child's play by comparison. Intel doesn't have a good graphics story. They sell hot power-hungry chips. They no longer have…
3. Yields. Historically Intel had the fastest ramp up to the highest yields. I don’t know if that still holds true.
It's fun to dig up old predictions of where we'd be today. Here's an article from 2002: https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1176510 >Moore's Law scales to at least 9nm: technologist >It'll be at least a human generation before Moore's Law begins to run out of gas at around the 9nm and even then it may thrive, TSMC's chief technologist said Tuesday (March 12). Calvin Chenming Hu told an audience at the annual…
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/12/11/intel_plans_1500_10...
The end is nigh Intel. Just like Apple switched to Intel Power PC’s were not upgrading, so will Apple switch to ARM.
Macs aren't a huge percent of Intel's processor business. It's a big enough percent that they would miss it, but Apple's desktop and portable market share is still small. And then there are servers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The consensus the last time there was a delay was that TSMC's 7nm process is roughly comparable to Intel's 10nm process. They're still ahead, but only until Intel finally ships 10nm. I'm not sure how much this affects the industry in general, but I bet there are some interesting Intel vs Arm discussions being fueled in Apple's product roadmap meetings.
This is still a massive change. Intel used to be 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else. Now they're slightly behind.
If we've gone asymptotic, it makes me wonder what other companies will be able to field a chip that's 90% as good as Intel in the next decade...