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> And that's how you come to Intel's situation on 2020: no 10nm node, no real new microarch in the last 5 years. Chips fabbed on 10 nm have been shipping in vo

by 0x64 6y ago

> And that's how you come to Intel's situation on 2020: no 10nm node, no real new microarch in the last 5 years. Chips fabbed on 10 nm have been shipping in volume since last summer. The Sunny Cove CPU cores found in Ice Lake chips, fabbed on the 10+ node, average roughly around 16 % higher performance vs. Skylake, clock-for-clock, before accounting for improvements in memory bandwidth. Tiger Lake (fabbed on 10++) will be shipping this year, alongside with Ice Lake Xeons.

dr_zoidberg 6y ago
That 10nm node (10nm+ as they call it) is not as mature as 14nm+++ and they can't reach the same clock speeds (or yields) and that's why they have to resort to comparing clock-for-clock against their previous generations. Extract from Anandtech[0] comparing Comet Lake vs Ice Lake: Some of these tests rely heavily on turbo, such as the PCMark tests, and so the Comet Lake i7-10710U can hit 4.7 GHz on the latest variant of Skylake, while the Ice Lake i7-1065G7, despite its higher IPC difference, can only do 3.9 GHz. This means in a lot of bursty workloads (which a lot of business workloads are), the Comet Lake wins and we see that play out. Again, that means that some chips aren't produced in 10nm, because if they were, they'd end up being straight up slower, despite having an 18% IPC improvement. As I said before: I really hope Intel sorts this mess up and comes along with something that can compete against AMDs offering. Otherwise we might see a turn of the tables, with AMD eventually stalling progress, just because they aren't pushed hard enough by the competition. [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15385/intels-confusing-messaging-is-comet-lake-better-than-ice-lake https://www.anandtech.com/show/15385/intels-confusing-messag...
- caycep 6y ago
  Are they just going to skip to 7nm at this point?
  - dr_zoidberg 6y ago
    Intel's 7nm should be comparable to TSMC's 5nm (actually Inte'ls original 10nm, the one that failed spectacularly, would've been better than TSMC's 7nm and 7nmP in terms of transistor density see [0]). And it was started a long ago (like new nodes usually are) so it should be coming along somewhere around the same time maybe? Intel hasn't said much about its future nodes, but there's some information and a few marketing slide around[1]. They seem to have learned from their 10nm mistake, so they're apparently planning to have + and ++ versions of the following nodes, that could handle production of a new microarch if the next node isn't ready, but only time will tell how that goes along. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process#7_nm_process_nodes_and_process_offerings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process#7_nm_process_node... [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-roadmap-from-2019-to-2029 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-ro...

by 0x64 6y ago

dr_zoidberg 6y ago

That 10nm node (10nm+ as they call it) is not as mature as 14nm+++ and they can't reach the same clock speeds (or yields) and that's why they have to resort to comparing clock-for-clock against their previous generations. Extract from Anandtech[0] comparing Comet Lake vs Ice Lake: Some of these tests rely heavily on turbo, such as the PCMark tests, and so the Comet Lake i7-10710U can hit 4.7 GHz on the latest variant of Skylake, while the Ice Lake i7-1065G7, despite its higher IPC difference, can only do 3.9 GHz. This means in a lot of bursty workloads (which a lot of business workloads are), the Comet Lake wins and we see that play out. Again, that means that some chips aren't produced in 10nm, because if they were, they'd end up being straight up slower, despite having an 18% IPC improvement. As I said before: I really hope Intel sorts this mess up and comes along with something that can compete against AMDs offering. Otherwise we might see a turn of the tables, with AMD eventually stalling progress, just because they aren't pushed hard enough by the competition. [0] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15385/intels-confusing-messaging-is-comet-lake-better-than-ice-lake https://www.anandtech.com/show/15385/intels-confusing-messag...

caycep 6y ago
Are they just going to skip to 7nm at this point?
- dr_zoidberg 6y ago
  Intel's 7nm should be comparable to TSMC's 5nm (actually Inte'ls original 10nm, the one that failed spectacularly, would've been better than TSMC's 7nm and 7nmP in terms of transistor density see [0]). And it was started a long ago (like new nodes usually are) so it should be coming along somewhere around the same time maybe? Intel hasn't said much about its future nodes, but there's some information and a few marketing slide around[1]. They seem to have learned from their 10nm mistake, so they're apparently planning to have + and ++ versions of the following nodes, that could handle production of a new microarch if the next node isn't ready, but only time will tell how that goes along. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process#7_nm_process_nodes_and_process_offerings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process#7_nm_process_node... [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-roadmap-from-2019-to-2029 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-ro...