9 ms·

"but chip costs will continue to fall " Apparently Intel didn't get the memo...

hga 11y ago
Well, in the class of processors I buy, near lowest speed Xeon E3 family, Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge had a small price decrease, a 100MHz speed increase, and added graphics (resulting in a rather big systems savings), Ivy Bridge -> Haswell is exactly the same price (say $6 less after inflation) and adds another 100MHz, plus an incrementally better microarchitecture and I'm sure better graphics. There's also more integration, perhaps resulting in lower motherboard prices, and Skylake has SKUs integrating the PCH at the cost of fewer PCIe lanes. We certainly aren't seeing the big jumps from previous generations, but it isn't entirely static. And this is a segment with much less pressure on power consumption than mobile, and perhaps other Xeons that go into huge machine rooms that I'm read are now more power limited than anything else.
Omin 11y ago
costs are falling, prices aren't
- hga 11y ago
  Costs are falling quite a bit less than normal. The tick from 32 nm Sandy Bridge to 22 nm Ivy Bridge went smoothly, as far as we can tell, but Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs have been going up, for example more and more masks are required for each new node, starting at 32 nm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning The next tick from Haswell at 22 nm to Broadwell at 14 nm did not go well. Seriously delayed due to low yields, per Wikipedia they're not doing low end desktops with it (perhaps due to NRE? Then again, these ought to be server chips with features cut out), and the Skylake microarchitecture on 14 nm has started coming out relatively quickly, cutting the normal lifetime Haswell should have had. The Cannonlake shrink to 10 nm has been delayed at least 2 years, with a Kaby Lake mid-life kicker at 14 nm breaking the tick-tock system they've used since 2007. No doubt this is paying off in reduced power for the computrons for mobile and server systems, but costs, that's not doing hardly so well, and apparently breaking Moore's Law. Intel is supposed to be the best at this, and foundries like TMSC have also been having problems at various points as they shrink.

hga 11y ago

Well, in the class of processors I buy, near lowest speed Xeon E3 family, Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge had a small price decrease, a 100MHz speed increase, and added graphics (resulting in a rather big systems savings), Ivy Bridge -> Haswell is exactly the same price (say $6 less after inflation) and adds another 100MHz, plus an incrementally better microarchitecture and I'm sure better graphics. There's also more integration, perhaps resulting in lower motherboard prices, and Skylake has SKUs integrating the PCH at the cost of fewer PCIe lanes. We certainly aren't seeing the big jumps from previous generations, but it isn't entirely static. And this is a segment with much less pressure on power consumption than mobile, and perhaps other Xeons that go into huge machine rooms that I'm read are now more power limited than anything else.

Omin 11y ago

costs are falling, prices aren't

hga 11y ago
Costs are falling quite a bit less than normal. The tick from 32 nm Sandy Bridge to 22 nm Ivy Bridge went smoothly, as far as we can tell, but Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs have been going up, for example more and more masks are required for each new node, starting at 32 nm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning The next tick from Haswell at 22 nm to Broadwell at 14 nm did not go well. Seriously delayed due to low yields, per Wikipedia they're not doing low end desktops with it (perhaps due to NRE? Then again, these ought to be server chips with features cut out), and the Skylake microarchitecture on 14 nm has started coming out relatively quickly, cutting the normal lifetime Haswell should have had. The Cannonlake shrink to 10 nm has been delayed at least 2 years, with a Kaby Lake mid-life kicker at 14 nm breaking the tick-tock system they've used since 2007. No doubt this is paying off in reduced power for the computrons for mobile and server systems, but costs, that's not doing hardly so well, and apparently breaking Moore's Law. Intel is supposed to be the best at this, and foundries like TMSC have also been having problems at various points as they shrink.