5 ms·

TSMC has already shrunken their die to 7nm. Intel can't keep up anymore. AMD wins this generation.

big_chungus 7y ago
Intel still beats on IPC. Their nodes are better-performing at the same process size, so they can be a little larger and still perform like a smaller AMD. That said, AMD is doing significantly better.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Their advantage has largely been eaten away by their various performance harming security fixes.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  AMD is winning on IPC. Zen2 soundly passed up Intel on IPC. Intel's higher clocks are its only remaining strength through which it can overcome the lower IPC just barely.
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    Hmm, my information is old. Thanks for the update. I was aware AMD had been better value for money for quite some time, but didn't know they had lost even IPC... big trouble for them. Makes me almost wonder if intel was purposely holding back 10nm until it really needed it. AMD beats on IPC, intel suddenly fixes their garbage?
    - kllrnohj 7y ago
      > Makes me almost wonder if intel was purposely holding back 10nm until it really needed it. Why would they do that? Intel didn't need to knock it out of the park, but they'd make more money doing yet another incremental improvement on 10nm just to get all the upgrade money. And to add in those laptop improvement features (wifi 6, integrated thunderbolt 3). I'd understand them holding back large IPC improvements just to trickle it out, but holding back 10nm entirely doesn't make sense. Especially since it'd let them do even higher core count Xeon chips which make stupid huge profit. > AMD beats on IPC, intel suddenly fixes their garbage? Except AMD has beaten Intel on IPC and yet Intel has still not been able to fix their garbage. So much so they're doing yet another 14nm line of laptop SKUs (Comet Lake)
    - xbmcuser 7y ago
      Why would intel do that they are going loose a lot market share in the server space the real money maker in the next couple of years large Intel buyers like Google have started looking at AMD already
NobodyNada 7y ago
You can't (directly) compare semiconductor node sizes across manufacturers -- it no longer corresponds to any meaningful physical measurement and is just a made-up number from the marketing department. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer: > Since 2009, however, "node" has become a commercial name for marketing purposes that indicates new generations of process technologies, without any relation to gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch. For example, GlobalFoundries' 7 nm process is similar to Intel's 10 nm process, thus the conventional notion of a process node has become blurred. TSMC and Samsung's 10 nm processes are somewhere between Intel's 14 nm and 10 nm processes in transistor density.

Intel still beats on IPC. Their nodes are better-performing at the same process size, so they can be a little larger and still perform like a smaller AMD. That said, AMD is doing significantly better.

Someone1234 7y ago
Their advantage has largely been eaten away by their various performance harming security fixes.
kllrnohj 7y ago
AMD is winning on IPC. Zen2 soundly passed up Intel on IPC. Intel's higher clocks are its only remaining strength through which it can overcome the lower IPC just barely.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Hmm, my information is old. Thanks for the update. I was aware AMD had been better value for money for quite some time, but didn't know they had lost even IPC... big trouble for them. Makes me almost wonder if intel was purposely holding back 10nm until it really needed it. AMD beats on IPC, intel suddenly fixes their garbage?
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    > Makes me almost wonder if intel was purposely holding back 10nm until it really needed it. Why would they do that? Intel didn't need to knock it out of the park, but they'd make more money doing yet another incremental improvement on 10nm just to get all the upgrade money. And to add in those laptop improvement features (wifi 6, integrated thunderbolt 3). I'd understand them holding back large IPC improvements just to trickle it out, but holding back 10nm entirely doesn't make sense. Especially since it'd let them do even higher core count Xeon chips which make stupid huge profit. > AMD beats on IPC, intel suddenly fixes their garbage? Except AMD has beaten Intel on IPC and yet Intel has still not been able to fix their garbage. So much so they're doing yet another 14nm line of laptop SKUs (Comet Lake)
  - xbmcuser 7y ago
    Why would intel do that they are going loose a lot market share in the server space the real money maker in the next couple of years large Intel buyers like Google have started looking at AMD already

NobodyNada 7y ago

You can't (directly) compare semiconductor node sizes across manufacturers -- it no longer corresponds to any meaningful physical measurement and is just a made-up number from the marketing department. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer: > Since 2009, however, "node" has become a commercial name for marketing purposes that indicates new generations of process technologies, without any relation to gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch. For example, GlobalFoundries' 7 nm process is similar to Intel's 10 nm process, thus the conventional notion of a process node has become blurred. TSMC and Samsung's 10 nm processes are somewhere between Intel's 14 nm and 10 nm processes in transistor density.