IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#91

Post by Devid2014 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #75

minthd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another issue: currently the biggest bottleneck , cost wise, is in lithography - the process we use to draw the transistors into chips. Because of this issue, the two latest generations of chips are more expensive(per transistor) than an older version - stopping moore's law. And moore's law probably won't return to life, until we learn how to solve that problem, which the current work doesn't help with.

I think we've been wasting far too much processing power in inefficient software for the past few decades, and it's only Moore's Law that let it happen for so long. Now that it's coming to an end, maybe we'll see more emphasis on efficiently optimised software and mindful resource usage.

We already see this comeback of C++ instate of truing to build everything in managed languages, like writing OS in C# .

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#92

Post by joshuapants » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:20 PM UTC

Crito wrote: post #82

avz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: > Comparing them [chip manufacturers] to press release-pushing biomedical researchers is tantamount to a slur. No, it isn't. Slower progress in biomedical research isn't a result of biomedical researchers exhibiting any of the qualities whose unwarranted attribution normally constitutes slur. It is the result of much greater complexity, lower predictability, higher safety requirements and weaker human unders…

The issue is less the progress of biomedical researchers, moreso the discrepancy between the headlines and the actual results. Most of the blame lies with the scientific press, but the researchers don't seem to mind it all that much either. Misleading or overly-optimistic press releases written by university personal are also the source of much of it.

> Misleading or overly-optimistic press releases written by university personal are also the source of much of it.

Whatever it takes to get those sweet, sweet grant dollars

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#93

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:21 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#94

Post by moonchrome » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:22 PM UTC

oldmanjay wrote: post #81

userbinator wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we've been wasting far too much processing power in inefficient software for the past few decades, and it's only Moore's Law that let it happen for so long. Now that it's coming to an end, maybe we'll see more emphasis on efficiently optimised software and mindful resource usage.

I think you're incorrect and remembering performance that never existed based on shortcomings you glossed over at the time because you have that all too human bias of believing that things were better when you were younger.

There is so many low hanging fruit in software design that is simply there because of legacy design trade-offs and the cost associated with replacing those - we could gain huge performance gains over night if we for eg. eliminated reliance on hardware memory protection and context switching from kernel space to user space by using languages that can prove memory safety in software.

Then imagine how much performance you could get out of OS level VMs that understand the processes at VM level (ie. can access code in some IR that they can analyze easily, recompile it on the fly, etc.) there is already stuff like this in specialized markets (eg. kernel level GC for JVM) but it's still fairly specific.

Then there's all the shitty legacy abstraction layers in things like filesystems - ZFS is a perfect example of what kind of gains you can get for free if you just rethink the design decisions behind current stack and see what applies and what doesn't.

If the benefit of rewriting these systems ever overcomes the cost - we have huge potential areas for performance gains, modern systems are very far from being performance efficient, they are efficient based on various other factors (development cost, compatibility, etc.)

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#95

Post by joshuapants » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #90

oldmanjay wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're incorrect and remembering performance that never existed based on shortcomings you glossed over at the time because you have that all too human bias of believing that things were better when you were younger.

I understand what you're saying, but do you really think most of a modern Android (to take the theme to its Javaesque extreme) stack is the most efficient way to accomplish processing? Compare that to some of the code people ran through 6502-derivatives. Abstraction may be more efficient in terms of programmer time, and performance efficiency may be high enough so as to be immaterial, but the two shouldn't be conflat…

> do you really think most of a modern Android (to take the theme to its Javaesque extreme) stack is the most efficient way to accomplish processing?

Reminds me of a version of this image[1] which has a discussion superimposed over it that says, "but if he had a big enough pile of ladders he could get over the wall!" and someone responds, "welcome to Android optimization." I think we see something similar with Javascript performance.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/AWG7LqR.jpg

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#96

Post by rasz_pl » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:27 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #34

ianlevesque wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, not likely. But because IBM and GF will manufacture for 3rd parties there's at least hope for AMD now if they get a better design.

I don't think that AMDs designs are particularly bad... an FX-8350 can go toe to toe with a higher end i5. Of course that's without the power savings of a newer process. I do hope that AMD comes up with something with a single-core performance competitive to an i7 with a power envelope in the ballpark.

>single-core performance competitive to an i7

best AMD chip cant even compete with cheapest Pentium(celeron) when it comes to IPC

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#97

Post by joshuapants » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

glhaynes wrote: post #80

rprospero wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What scares me about proposals like this is that it's further stratification of society into two separate classes: those who actually own everything and those who must appease the owners. For example, I can put £40 in my sock drawer every month and, in eight months, I could buy a PS4 and use it for the rest of my life. I could then start save that £40 toward a different purchase. Alternately, I could go with the site…

I could buy a PS4 and use it for the rest of my life If you're amazingly lucky. In actuality, you've got to replace it (or have it repaired, which is usually almost as expensive) every few years because it wears out. And you've got to continue paying for electricity to run it all that time. And the TV (and replacements/repairs for it) to play it on. And the electricity to run the TV. And a payment for the dwelling in…

In the "rental" situation you still pay for all of those things, but with the added overhead of corporate bureaucracy.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#98

Post by joshuapants » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

graycat wrote: post #33

As I recall, there is microelectronics fab work in Taiwan, South Korea, and, in the US, at IBM and Intel, at least. And maybe China and Russia are trying to get caught up in fabs. I wonder: What organization, really, is mostly responsible for the newer fabs? I mean, do each of Samsung, Intel, IBM, etc. do everything on their own? Or is there a main company, maybe Applied Materials, with some help from, say, some smal…

> And maybe China and Russia are trying to get caught up in fabs.

This is something that interests me. It must be terribly difficult to get up to speed on something like this, even with vigorous state funding. Are there any layman-readable sources on the topic?

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#99

Post by api » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #87

timboslice wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where 450mm wafers and EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) were supposed to come in. EUV relieves the need for double patterning and the tremendous additional costs that entails (and was used to manufacture this 7nm chip). The CEO of Applied Materials, Gary Dickerson, has stated that the 450mm wafer timeline “has definitely been pushed out from a timing standpoint.” That’s incredibly important, because the…

And for comparison, scale fans, let's remember that we're talking about making 7nm features on wafers that are nearly a foot and a half wide, using near-as-dammit x-ray wavelengths. A few teething problems would be expected. 7nm has been struggling for a while, 5nm is likely to be late, and I don't think anyone really knows what happens after that. Longer term, industrial manufacture is probably going to have to move…

... and why would we invest the money to do that when there is not enough (software-driven) demand for that performance.

The average person uses PCs and mobile devices to browse the web, write documents, order an Uber, and maybe play games. Nothing much is being done on the software front that challenges current systems. Maybe if VR took off or we got home applications for AI like domestic robotics that would change. I could see a domestic robot capable of folding clothes, cleaning up, etc. needing a low power chip that can do what a dual-12-core Xeon can do on smart phone power and thermal profiles. I'm not sure server and high-end compute demand is sufficient to pay for the R&D that would be required to far beyond 7nm.

But the good news is that we haven't even scratched the surface of what current systems could theoretically accomplish. Look into the demo scene and prepare to be blown away by what 8-bit CPUs in the 1980s could accomplish with non-crap code running on them. Maybe we need a software Moore's Law to take over for the hardware one -- right now software has more of an erooM's Law.

One thing is clear: if you do software, ball's in your court either way. Either you need to invent killer apps to keep demand high for high performance computers -- things that really need that much power -- or you need to take over for the hardware people and start finding new efficiencies.

Ball's really been in software's court for a while anyway with multi-core... linear performance max'd out (for consumer chips) a while ago.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#100

Post by krylon » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

rurban wrote: post #28

YES! Kill Intel, PPC64 everywhere :) It will not happen, I know, but "Wouldn't it be nice" was always one of my favorite Beach Boys song (Pet Sounds!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofByti7A4uM This is THE chance.

I'm upvoting you simply because I have had a pretty good day and because I love "Wouldn't It Be Nice". (In fact, Pet Sounds is an awesome album.)

I a former job, I was working on an application that did a lot of computational geometry, and I remember reading one day that then-current POWER chips could do floating point multiplication and division in a single cycle (plus latency for pipelining, of course)...