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Intel's 10nm Is Broken, Delayed Until 2019
- loser777 8y agoA good time to bring up: https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/moores-law-setting-the-record-straight/ https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/moores-law-setting-the... >Second, in today’s world Moore’s Law can be delivered only by a few companies. Every new process node gets harder and therefore more expensive. [...] >So, no, Moore’s Law is not ending at any time we can see ahead of us. while Moore's original paper: http://www.monolithic3d.com/uploads/6/0/5/5/6055488/gordon_moore_1965_article.pdf http://www.monolithic3d.com/uploads/6/0/5/5/6055488/gordon_m... was always about the trend of putting _more_ components in a chip being more cost effective than keeping the number of components constant. Surely if this were still the case we'd have seen Skylake++++ with cores << n by now.
- nimos 8y agoI think 2019-2020 will be super interesting for hardware. Intel, Samsung, Gloflo, TSMC could all have competitive 7/10nm nodes. Unless either Intel or AMD makes some crazy IPC gains they should be fairly competitive with each other and it will be interesting to see what the ARM giants can do as well. Hopefully Chinese investment into DRAM/NAND starts to come to fruition by then too.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Nokinside 8y agoProcesses in the "same level" are not automatically competitive against each other. Cost, yield and performance can vary. I think the cost and complexity of advancing lithography processes has increased so much that the technology risks have increased dramatically. Some foundries may blunder relative to others. Intel has abandoned their tick–tock model for Prosess-Archictecture-Optimization. In retrospect it seems clear that they knew that 10nm process is risky step and it's impossible to predict when it's ready.
- mtgx 8y agoThat was when they believed they'd stay 3 generations on the same process node. Now it's more like Process-Archictecture-Optimization-Increased Clock Speed And Power Consumption-We Don't Know What We're Doing Anymore Also, you're right about the complexity. Intel's 10nm process is likely far more complex (more steps) than Samsung's 7nm EUV process, or even TSMC and GloFlo's 7nm DUV processes, which is why it's taking them so long. In retrospect, Intel becoming a "manufacturer for ARM chip companies" seems laughable now, doesn't it?
- hajile 8y agoWe're to a point where N nm nodes is meaningless. I want a list of feature dimensions to compare. That's the only meaningful way to do a rough comparison these days.
- lmilcin 8y agoYou can think of power consumption as a resource -- if you reduce power consumption of existing features you can put more new features. The actual size isn't really that important (other than the cost of silicon wafer). To significantly reduce power consumption you need improved process and this is where smaller nodes are so important, because they are currently the only really viable way to significantly reduce power consumption.
- indiv0 8y agoNow I kind of want to see the data on power consumption/transistor count over time.
- dmoy 8y agoYou can find them if you look. E.g. tsmc 7nm is roughly equivalent to Intel 10nm in most dimensions. Samsung's 7nm is almost exactly intel 10nm in two dimensions. Etc etc.
- hindsightbias 8y agoIf necessity is the mother of invention, then we'll need a lot better software shortly.
- tzahola 8y agoBye bye JavaScript
- lvoudour 8y agoI agree. And barring some groundbreaking invention that completely alters the hardware landscape, I think the trend will be heterogeneous/domain specific ICs. Which means new software development paradigms as well.
- qznc 8y agoCoincidentally,I had my PhD defense yesterday. This trend is the primary motivation for my work. http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/phd http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/phd The research project is http://invasic.de http://invasic.de
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- hinkley 8y ago“Because of the production difficulties with 10nm, Intel has revised its density target back to 2.4X [from 2.7X] for the transition to the 7nm node.” Ouch. A day late and a dollar short. They claim that this new node will still be better than TSMC’s new node, but we are now in leapfrog mode aren’t we? Where you have a year advantage on your competitor and then they will have the best tech but you’ll be halfway to unseating them again?
- mtgx 8y agoAnd I bet they just mean TSMC's 7nm node there, but that's very misleading. By the time Intel has its 7nm node ready, TSMC will be ahead with its 5nm node.
- matthewmacleod 8y agoThat’s possible, but intel’s 7nm is likely to be better than TSMC’s 5nm regardless
- mtgx 8y agoConsidering the troubles they have with 10nm and the fact that everyone else will have more expertise with EUV lithography than them (Intel hasn't even planned to use EUV until 5nm), that seems quite doubtful at this point.
- tambre 8y agoPer the article: > The company will switch to EUV at 7nm.
- hinkley 8y agoCan Intel work apace on their 7nm node when the previous one is behind schedule by two years, or does this derail those plans?
- eco 8y ago
- HugoDaniel 8y agoOk, so they are delaying it again without a reasonable explanation why except that "it is hard". But the real question is: Does it meltdown ?
- jlebrech 8y agoyour meltdown question gave me an idea, what if they had extremely fast cpu that were designed to meltdown and you use them like a consumable.
- FridgeSeal 8y agoThat sounds horrific. Stop talking before you give them any ideas.
- jlebrech 8y agoit would be for emergency calculations, or for running a games that would otherwise cost $$$ for $.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoYeah, cause I want a subscription service / micro-payments for my cpu as well.
- snuxoll 8y agoIntel's already tried CPU DLC with the Pentium G6951 back in 2010, you could buy a $50 upgrade card that would unlock hyper threading and extra L1 cache. Plus there's now the VROC hardware keys to unlock NVMe RAID support on X299 CPU's. Microtransactions were the next step for the gaming industry after traditional expansion packs and then DLC, let's just hope we don't get CPU loot boxes (though I guess we already have that simply due to the silicon lottery, eh?).
- sp332 8y agoI think a missile designer did this one time. The missile wasn't expected to exist very long after it was turned on, so they cranked up the power on the CPU and didn't include much of a heatsink. Saved weight but testing was very expensive.
- codemusings 8y agoCan someone explaing why it's important to increase the density instead of increasing the size of a CPU? Knowing nothing about chip design I'm probably thinking about this the wrong way but socket backwards compatability aside is it not feasible to simply increase the chip size? Is a higher density more rewarding?
- dracyr 8y agoIt is basically an issue with the thermal capacity of the chip, larger size means more heat.
- snuxoll 8y agoThis right here is the big one, to be honest. Yes, clocks, latency between parts of the die, etc are all problems - but they can be worked around with some effort. Thermals and also power delivery are huge problems with large chips, just compare the massive 471 mm2 die of the GP102 (1080 Ti/Titan X) to the 150 mm2 die of the Coffee Lake hexacore chips. GP102 can draw 250-300W depending on boost clock, the Core i7-8700K can also draw upwards of 200W depending on how high you push the clocks and vCore (to keep said clocks stable). There's a reason why board-partner GPU's always have huge coolers attached to them, and why people pushing CPU clocks are often using at least a giant air cooler like the Hyper 212 EVO or an AIO liquid cooler with a 240mm+ radiator. Hell, let's skip thermals and just talk electricity - getting 200W+ of stable power to the cores on these dies is no easy task as-is, that's why you have people like buildzoid doing reviews of power delivery on motherboards and GPU boards to see if VRM's are going to blow up trying to power your expensive hardware if you're overclocking (or sometimes even if you aren't). All in all, we have thermal and power scaling issues at current chip sizes - making them bigger isn't particularly feasible unless everybody is going to start installing 360mm radiators in their system and even that might not be enough depending on clock speeds and the vCore required to maintain them.
- dogma1138 8y ago8700K pushes 130W at 5ghz all Core OC under full AVX load without offset even uner LN you won’t get 200W from a 8700K.
- wolfi1 8y agoAre we talking about the lithographics process itself as a problem or other manufacturing problems like VIAs, etching, diffusion? The article is a liitle bit vague on the actual problems Intel is experiencing. But I doubt Intel will us, anyway ;)
- FBISurveillance 8y agoIt seems like we're going to have to stick to 16GB of RAM on MacBook Pro for another 1.5 years or so, aren't we? From what I understand LPDDR4 as part of Cannon Lake is directly affected by this delay.
- dasmoth 8y agoFrom what I understand LPDDR4 as part of Cannon Lake is directly affected by this delay. Do we have confirmation of this? It seems startling to release yet another generation of laptop CPUs without this... but I admit I can’t find anything to to the contrary. Pretty much anyone building mid-to-high-end laptops must be livid.
- ksec 8y agoCoffe Lake does not support LPDDR4. Cannon Lake do support LPDDR4 but is now delayed. As a matter of fact I am wondering if they might skip Cannonlake and go Icelake instead. There is no other rumoured "lake" in between, so yes, another generation without 32GB RAM Laptop. These information are widely available everywhere, not sure what you want as confirmation.
- dasmoth 8y agoThe linked article mentions “Whiskey Lake” as an intermediate 14nm range (actually it says “desktop”, but I’ve seen it mentioned in a laptop context elsewhere). But I fear you’re right that LPDDR4 support is still being left for Coffee Lake...
- masklinn 8y ago> Pretty much anyone building mid-to-high-end laptops must be livid. Well those which put a premium on sleep/suspend autonomy, which for DDR4 is the big edge of LP. IIRC the "active" energy consumption of DDR4 was lowered to LP-level already.
- jrrrr 8y ago> sleep/suspend autonomy What does that mean? Do other manufacturers, offering 32gb, use desktop RAM? What kind of compromises would that bring to a MBP?
- numbsafari 8y agoDoes this create a situation where Apple will be forced to switch away in order to differentiate, or does Intel plan to offer other kinds of improvements to their larger customers? Sounds like greater vertical integration will become a key differentiator. Admittedly, if the gaps between ARM and x86 chrome books are any indication, there’s still some room for Intel to be competitive. But does that hold for someone targeting a higher price point and with more control end-to-end?
- swagtricker 8y agoApple has already announced that they'll start using their own chips by 2020 - Intel's problems may be part of the reason why: https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/02/report-apple-to-begin-switch-from-intel-chips-in-macs-by-2020/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/02/report-apple-to-begin-switch-...
- redial 8y agoApple has announced no such thing. I suggest you actually read the article you linked.
- bitL 8y agoSo only NUCs will get Cannon Lake after all? With rumors that it contains a discrete Radeon 500 GPU it might be the first cheap Steam Box for everyone...
- sliken 8y agoHa, "cheap". Have you looked at the AMD+Intel hybrid CPU prices? I don't think either AMD or Intel is particularly interested in that being a price/perf leader. Especially from the AMD side who already sells zen CPUs with AMD GPUs inside.