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Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

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Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#81

Post by irthomasthomas »

PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

The nm, today, is a marketing term, divorced from the real manufacturing process.

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#82

Post by threatripper »

somat wrote: post #49

I am not convinced moore's law no longer holds true, consider that there is a third dimension that no one has yet figured out. I am no silicon engineer but I suspect a chip that fully takes advantage of the third dimension would be something like a sponge full of built in channels for the working fluid to remove heat. First however I suspect you will see chiplets arranged vertically like heatsink fins and the whole c…

Heat removal is basically a 2D problem. A 3D pipe has a 2D cross section in which fluid can transport heat. Right now we are mostly limited by heat removal, so adding more height to the chip doesn't help anything with the heat. Also, the chips are already many layers thick and each layer means processing steps which means time and money.

If you look into flash memory which aren't limited by heat, they have dozens of functional layers already and then we also stack those silicon wafers.

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#83

Post by oneplane »

PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

And the worst thing is that if execs etc. think that they can sit back down and breathe easy because they have a path towards even more infinite money in their chip business now that Moore's law isn't constraining that anymore, real R&D investments into actual advancements might not get the same attraction anymore...

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#84

Post by samatman »

PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

I've been jesting for years that it should be referred to as "Moore's business plan", except it isn't a joke.

That business plan is no longer functional for Intel. Translated, Moore's business plan was to shrink die size, and speed up clocks, so much as to obsolete their previous offering with an 18 month half life.

It just doesn't work that way anymore, and hasn't for quite some time.

Engelbart's Scaling Observation[0], on the other hand, remains quite interesting, and from what I see remains in force. Genetics in particular is still pulling exponential gains out of the luminiferous ether.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbart%27s_law

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#85

Post by pjmlp »

PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

The problem is that GPUs are mostly underutilized outside games and machine learning, because the industry still hasn't moved away from the concept only a few selected group of developers can enjoy tooling to program them.

So everyone that works in other domains, without access to libraries written by the GPU druids, largely ignores their existence.

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#86

Post by adrian_b »

bjourne wrote: post #71
PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

The reason Intel was "stuck" at 14 nm was because it took Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) many years longer to become viable than was predicted. Prices may have more to do with the EUV market being dominated by ASML which has serious trouble producing lithography machines fast enough to meet demand.

No, Intel was "stuck" at 14 nm because they believed that they will succeed to scale down the transistor sizes a lot more, without using EUV, as Pat Gelsinger has just explained in a long interview in the Verge.

However they failed to implement with good results the methods that they had hoped to work, while the others, i.e. TSMC and Samsung had much more realistic roadmaps, which added EUV at the right moment.

Intel was not stalled by waiting for EUV, on the contrary they were not prepared for the transition that was necessary when EUV was eventually ready.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/4/23385652/pat-gelsinger-in...

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#87

Post by miohtama »

pjmlp wrote: post #85
PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

The problem is that GPUs are mostly underutilized outside games and machine learning, because the industry still hasn't moved away from the concept only a few selected group of developers can enjoy tooling to program them. So everyone that works in other domains, without access to libraries written by the GPU druids, largely ignores their existence.

I thought most generic computation workloads are ill-suited for GPUs. A normal web SaaS application is full of if branches and JMP instructions. Running this on GPU would slow it down, not speed it up.

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#88

Post by pjmlp »

miohtama wrote: post #87
pjmlp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that GPUs are mostly underutilized outside games and machine learning, because the industry still hasn't moved away from the concept only a few selected group of developers can enjoy tooling to program them. So everyone that works in other domains, without access to libraries written by the GPU druids, largely ignores their existence.

I thought most generic computation workloads are ill-suited for GPUs. A normal web SaaS application is full of if branches and JMP instructions. Running this on GPU would slow it down, not speed it up.

Exposing GPU programming to anyone besides C, C++ and Fortran developers would already help, even if that would take a speed bump, as proven by the few attempts targeting PTX.

I wasn't talking about Web apps.

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#89

Post by PaulHoule »

pjmlp wrote: post #85
PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

The problem is that GPUs are mostly underutilized outside games and machine learning, because the industry still hasn't moved away from the concept only a few selected group of developers can enjoy tooling to program them. So everyone that works in other domains, without access to libraries written by the GPU druids, largely ignores their existence.

For one thing, most employers will refuse to issue a laptop with a real GPU to developers and other employees because they are afraid they will get used for games.

Re: Moore’s Law is dead – Long live the chiplet

#90

Post by hnuser123456 »

jakogut wrote: post #73
PaulHoule wrote: post #70

Moore’s law is alive but the benefits are diminishing. Until 2005 or so, shrinking transistors automatically increased speed and reduced power consumption. When that ran out of steam, the industry went to multi core and massive parallelism with GPUs. Until recently each shrink also lowered the cost per transistor, but that seems to have run out also and has something to do with why Intel was stuck at 14nm for so long…

Something to consider is that smaller chiplets have higher yields than monolithic dies given the same defect rate, which can certainly have an effect on price.

Right, more precisely cut out the defects from a wafer and save as much precious top-tier silicon as possible. Plus, another benefit of chiplets is that not every circuit needs the same performance level. Save the 5nm stuff for "hot paths" and use increasingly older processes for less performance/power critical applications, because while they might take up more space, they won't unnecessarily take up more next-gen fab time. Phones are literally the smallest and most power-limited devices we use so it makes sense to make every chip in them 5nm. Laptops and desktops and servers are not so constrained.
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