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Intel: 10nm Product Era Has Begun, 7nm on Track
- tyingq 7y agoI wonder if they'll consider the "chiplet" model AMD went with. Yields are higher with smaller pieces.
- sq_ 7y agoIt'll definitely be interesting to see if they do. If I remember correctly, there were some articles with recent Xeon chips about how their monolithic design was hurting them pretty badly on yields.
- selectodude 7y agoThere are benefits to it if you can get the yields up right, and Intel's 14 nm +++++++++++ is pretty darn awesome at this point.
- sq_ 7y agoAMD seems to be doing very well with their non-monolithic CCX setup for Zen, especially now that Zen 2 has fixed up some of the earlier issues with inter-core and inter-CCX communication. Intel has definitely had plenty of time to refine their 14nm monolithic architectures over the years since Skylake, though!
- aoeusnth1 7y agoYes, they have said as much in their investor slides.
- ATsch 7y agoSigns currently point towards Intel skipping the chiplet-on-interposer model AMD is currently using and going directly to 3D stacking i.e. dies directly on top of other dies. They did a paper launch of their "Foveros" 3D stacking technology and "Lakefield" Architecture this year, which is clearly still in very early stages, and also tellingly announced at their investor meetup. It will probably be some years before we see any real chips with this. AMD is speculated to go with a combined model (chiplets, but stacked cache on the IO Die) with Zen 3/4 and then go full 3D for Zen 5 or so.
- Veedrac 7y agoThis conjecture sounds wrong to me. 3D stacking and chiplets are complementary; going only 3D has thermal and cost issues, so it makes sense to combine both. One shouldn't replace the other any time soon.
- ATsch 7y agoWell, the Lakefield design is fully 3D, and Intel has not announced any chiplet based designs, so either they made it all up, or they're convinced they can make it work in the next few years.
- Veedrac 7y agoLakefield is a 1+4 core part, it's tiny and won't need chiplets. Chiplets are necessary only once you get to core counts that won't fit on a single square of silicon. Intel have announced co-EMIB, which seems to be their solution to 2D integration of 3D-stacked parts. https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2503/intel-introduces-co-emib-to-stitch-multiple-3d-die-stacks-together-adds-omni-directional-interconnects/ https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2503/intel-introduces-co-emib...
- hartator 7y agoWhile AMD is already selling CPUs at 7nm.
- lettergram 7y agoTo be fair they measure them differently. For reference, Intel 10nm has slightly higher transistor density than 7nm TSMC or Samsung https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication
- mattmar96 7y agoTable after the chart says TSMC's 7nm+, currently in mass production, has higher density than Intel's upcoming 10nm. TSMC’s 7nm+ 115.8 MTr/mm² Intel’s 10nm 100.8 MTr/mm² (2018 estimate)
- rkangel 7y agoIt is completely insane (and awesome) that "Million transistors per square millimeter" is a useful unit.
- mc32 7y agoAfter realizing TSMC and AMD surpassed them and are aiming for their lunch, looks like they got their ducks in a row and are coming out guns blazing. This will probably satisfy big clients and partners. Long term it will depend on whether AMD can keep up the pressure. Good times for CPU buyers.
- throwaway2048 7y agoIntel has been saying 10nm is ready and in production for almost 3 years now, not holding my breath.
- mc32 7y agoThey’re entering high volume production according to the article. 7nm is basically taped out and they’re working on 5nm.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago> entering high volume production according to the article Obviously, we need to know the definition of "high volume production"...
- mc32 7y agoThe Oregon and Israel fabs, Chandler, AZ coming next quarter. It’s a guess as to actual volume though. However that they are expanding their production throughout fabs means they have confidence in their process now (i.e. high yield). But as others point out, these are their server parts and not desktop parts yet. We’ll have to see when those start shipping.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sq_ 7y agoBack in 2016-17, around Skylake/Kaby Lake, I remember getting all excited with some friends about the prospect of Intel 10nm, which they were saying would be used for their immediately upcoming series of chips. Now that it's 2019 and they're finally claiming to enter high-volume production of 10nm, I have a really hard time taking any claims they make about future lithography nodes at face value.
- segfaultbuserr 7y agoDaily reminder: Intel is having various technical problems and arguably made some bad business decisions, but remember, semiconductor manufacturing processes are no longer directly comparable using the "x nanometer" number. A comparison should mention their technical differences. "x nanometer" has became a technically meaningless trademark solely exists for indicating new generations of process for marketing since ~2009's introduction of FinFET. It has no actual relation to gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch. When some people say "5 nm" is the early-stage of nanotechnology, remember that the gate length actually stays at 25 nm since 2009. GlobalFoundries' 7 nm process is similar to Intel's 10 nm process. TSMC and Samsung's 10 nm processes are only slightly denser than Intel's 14 nm in transistor density. They are actually much closer to Intel's 14 nm process than they are to Intel's 10 nm process. I'm not saying that Intel is 100% faithful, the 14 nm in the original ITRS roadmap was described by Intel as "10 nm". Also, DRAM chips are yet another different can of worms, the process "number" for DRAM chips is not directly comparable with CPU's "number" as well. As conventional Moore's Law is reaching the end, the semiconductor firms spent a lot of efforts to make things as confusing as possible. I'm not a semiconductor engineer, I'm just an ordinary programmer, I don't fully understand the funny business going on since 2009, any correction is welcomed. In other words, Intel still stays on the state-of-art of semiconductor manufacturing, in line with GlobalFoundries and TSMC, not significantly better or worse, in contrary to what the "x nanometer" number would make you to believe, but they do have a lot of production issues.
- throwaway2048 7y agoGlobal foundries' 7nm process was similar to Intel's 10nm, however Intel heavily revised their 10nm process to be approximately 1.3x less dense.
- segfaultbuserr 7y agoYou seem to know more about recent news better than me. I heard that Intel's 10 nm delay was mainly the result of its overambitious engineering and beliefs that they could do 10 nm via existing DUV without the troubles of moving to EUV, but the yield proved to be extremely low and basically a disaster. Is it true? What is their reenginnered solution in addition to making it 1.3x less dense?
- chx 7y agoThey still admit they won't have 10nm desktop chips till 2021 (at least) with 7nm predicted to ship in 2022. https://www.techpowerup.com/260141/intel-clarifies-on-10nm-desktop-cpus-still-on-the-table-likely-in-2021 https://www.techpowerup.com/260141/intel-clarifies-on-10nm-d... Which of course means that 10nm will never ship on the desktop. And you bet most mobile chips they will ship next year will be "Comet Lake" on 14nm and not "Ice Lake" or "Tiger Lake" 10nm. The 10nm process is completely botched they just can't admit that.
- leeter 7y agoAs best I can tell Intel kinda painted themselves into a corner with their 14nm+++ process. It produces really high quality parts (no surprise) but that also means that there is now an expectation of super high clocks on the intel side. That's not realistic however and I highly doubt their 10nm can currently match their 14nm+++ process on clocks (yet). It looks like Intel is thus focusing 10nm on areas where clocks more representative of a new node won't be an issue: server and mobile. I'll be honest and say I'm very curious to see how intel tries to escape this trap they've set for themselves. Unless we see rapid gains in the 10nm process quality up into the 4.5+ GHz range I wouldn't expect to see 10nm desktop parts anytime soon.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoMaybe that's perfectly okay? I don't care about power efficiency in my large stationary gaming PC, and I don't see any reason I should care.
- KingMachiavelli 7y agoHaha, obviously the largest CPU market is date centers which pretty much only care about performance/watt. The gaming market is really only useful for PR and launching new architectures.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoA fine point. I guess I'm not clear which audience we're discussing here? Data centers presumably don't care at all about those super high clocks, so I don't think any downgrade in that area would be a problem for them, as long as overall metrics are good.
- NicoJuicy 7y agoSlight reminder: - they have been saying this for a long time - they have also been saying that they won't have a 7nm untill 2021: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-meeting/#gs.d3i14m https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-meeting/... It seemed that they had internal problems which caused the delays ( experienced people leaving). I think they got spooked by TSMC mentioning 3nm for 2023 with 19,x billion in investments. Samsung was also mentioning 5nm. I'll see it when I see it. Currently, I'm not convinced. Ps. Great timing for the financial results of AMD fyi. Guess when that is :p Also: yes, I believe in AMD ( = stocks), because they had great execution in a short timeframe the last years. It's amazing. For the rest, I'm curious to see what arguments will come here because of financial investments or because of being "true?" believers :p
- std_throwaway 7y ago> (experienced people leaving) This has me curious on how much of the Management style of Andy Grove is still alive inside intel. Do they change the company culture and _want_ these people to leave or was it mismanagement?
- NicoJuicy 7y agoI saw multiple people here in HN mentioning this, so I have no idea.
- m0zg 7y agoIntel is feeling insecure: AMD is announcing earnings tomorrow, so this fluff piece was absolutely timed to blunt the impact of that.
- wtallis 7y ago> so this fluff piece was absolutely timed to blunt the impact of that. The timing has nothing to do with AMD. Intel announced their own earnings on Thursday, and this piece didn't get written and edited in time to run on Friday so it got delayed to Monday.
- m0zg 7y agoIf that's the case they should have released it a few days later, to avoid looking insecure. Because that's what it looks like, and I'm not the only one on the thread who sees it that way.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agoAMD: Cute.
- birdyrooster 7y agoAt this rate, an Intel motherboard will have no room for any chipset other than the CPU. Are we going back to slot form factor for processors?
- benologist 7y agoYes - https://liliputing.com/2019/10/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-teardown-reveals-removable-the-element-module-inside.html https://liliputing.com/2019/10/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-teardo...
- netrikare 7y agoark.intel.com indicates that transactional extensions are not present in 10th gen processors. Did Intel decide to abandon tsx-ni?
- 0xcde4c3db 7y agoMaybe they're limiting it to Xeon products, since Intel seemingly has a quota of asinine market segmentation decisions per generation.
- KindOne 7y agoIntel is a bit annoying at picking and choosing which instruction sets get included in the processes. Maybe they just removed it for the 10th gen mobile? I wonder if they will be included in the 10th gen desktop, if that is ever going to be released. I've only looked at a few of the mobile and desktop 9th gen, looks like its only included in some of the higher end models. Mobile: i5-9300H - no i5-9400H - yes i7-9750H - no i7-9850H - yes Desktop: i3-9300 - no i5-9600 - yes i7-9700 - yes
- greatpatton 7y agoI think that this article is really telling about the truth behind the Intel marketing: https://semiaccurate.com/2019/10/29/intels-actions-on-10nm-are-telling/ https://semiaccurate.com/2019/10/29/intels-actions-on-10nm-a... Intel is telling every 3 months that 10mm is around the corner since 2016... (and even had a token 10mm CPU). Here we are in 2019, and we are still waiting.
- Nokinside 7y agoMillion transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm²) is better comparison metric than the commercial name for the process. Here is handy chart I copied from somewhere: Tech Node name (MTr/mm²) Intel 7nm (2??) TSMC 5nm EUV 171.3 TSMC 7nm+ EUV 115.8 Intel 10nm 100.8 TSMC 7nm Mobile 96.5 Samsung 7nm EUV 95.3 TSMC 7nm HPC 66.7 Samsung 8nm 61.2 TSMC 10nm 60.3 Samsung 10nm 51.8 Intel 14nm 43.5 GF 12nm 36.7 TSMC 12nm 33.8 Samsung/GF 14nm 32.5 TSMC 16nm 28.2 https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mtr-mm%C2%B2 https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mtr-mm%C2%B2
- zepearl 7y agoSource of table: https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication Link referenced earlier by "lettergram".