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When intel manages to get fab process for 5nm ready, the performance (single core) will be significantly higher then ARM due to Intel's superior architecture. T

When intel manages to get fab process for 5nm ready, the performance (single core) will be significantly higher then ARM due to Intel's superior architecture. They're going to figure out a way, don't count them out yet. I'd long Intel, it is over sold.

akmittal 6y ago
Intel is not even ready for 7nm, Their 7nm is delayed till 2022. So fastest they can do 5nm is in 2023(Seems unlikely though when they couldn't even manage to do 7nm). ARM is not only threat to Intel. AMD caught up with Intel with Zen 2 and surpassed in Zen 3. Zen 4 5nm is planned for end 2021. If they can manage IPC gains same as Zen1-Zen2 or Zen2-Zen3, Intel is in serious trouble.
- absolutelyrad 6y ago
  They'll catch up. Besides they can skip 7nm as soon as their 5nm is ready. Intel has access to most of the same machines TSMC has.
  - akmittal 6y ago
    TSMC is shipping 7nm from mid 2018. When Intel ships 5nm, Apple/ARM is not going to stop development. M1 is their first laptop grade chip. Even if they get 10% IPC gain annually thats gonna make differece to big to catch up.
  - perardi 6y ago
    Intel has access to most of the same machines TSMC has. OK, but, where’s the beef? Intel has been stuck for a long time now. Do we know the management and corporate culture can catch up?
- samfisher83 6y ago
  Sandy Lake is an old architecture and with a lot of tweaks intel on single core it is still competitive. If they could fix their process or maybe just go with TSMC they should be able to become competitive. Its not like Intel hasn't been in this position before with Athlon 64. The one think they used to have was fab advantage.
  - akmittal 6y ago
    Its not even about just pure performance, It is about performance per watt. Intel may catch up with performance but matching performance per watt seems very difficult.
    - absolutelyrad 6y ago
      I'd presume that a node shrink would lead to a significant decrease in power consumption.
      - akmittal 6y ago
        Yes for sure it will, but to ARM levels is almost impossible.
tambourine_man 6y ago
I don't know what happened to Intel. Whatever it was, it will be studied for years in Harvard Business School and the likes. They've been consistently a few nodes ahead of the entire industry for decades. But, whatever it was, it was bad. They've been stuck basically at the same node for 5 years or more. And, according to the article, their next CPU will still be at 14nm, which is completely nuts. There's no way you can compete with such brute force disadvantage. It's remarkable to watch, but I wouldn't count on Intel getting their act together anytime soon.
- adriancr 6y ago
  I think they missed the boat with EUV and tried using existing tech to reach 10/7nm https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-euv-tools-order https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-euv-tools-order TSMC is making massive orders and seems to already be using that. Intel hasn't even started - "Intel is also expected to start deploying EUVL systems sometimes in 2022 when it starts making chips using its 7 nm node."
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    Sure, but why? How have they become this blind and stagnant? Their architecture has always been on the mediocre side but manufacturing has been uncontested for almost 50 years. What makes them suddenly hit a wall while everyone else plowed through?
    - ip26 6y ago
      If the "wall" was the current wavelengths (ArF) just don't cut it, then the competition has gone around the wall with EUV. I have no insider knowledge but EUV is super expensive. It could be that the bean counters tried to delay one node too long.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Everyone knows what happened to Intel. They bet everything on their 10nm process - which has greater transistor density than TSMC's 7nm process - and they lost. Intel flew too close to the sun and their wings melted. The vitriol everyone has for them is based on the fact they could have been pumping out cheap 4 / 6 / 8 core chips for people, but instead held the entire world of computing at basically quad-core CPU level for the better part of a decade. And I share that vitriol. I'm happy they're suffering and are in pain. I hope the same thing happens to NVIDIA. I hope the same thing happens to AMD. I relish when a company and when people are made to suffer when they hold back our technological process in the name of fucking quarterly profits.
perardi 6y ago
Does Intel has a dramatically superior architecture? Tough to tell right now, given the process deficit. And anyways, is this transition entirely about performance? Apple is obviously selling it like that, but it seems like they really want the ability to fine-tune the architecture and SoC to their needs. And they’re not the only company with the desire and capital to make that happen; Microsoft, Amazon, Google, they all must desire on some level to finesse systems to meet their specific needs, and Intel isn’t in that business.
ben7799 6y ago
This is hot nonsense.. people in the academic computing world and in chip/system design have been predicting this day would come all the way back in the 1990s. If you looked at anything down at the ASM level and lower it was pretty apparent what was going on. There were plenty of RISC systems that were way out ahead of Intel that lost not because of inferiority but because they were being used for inferior business models. DEC Alpha, Sun UltraSparc, etc.. they lost cause they weren't pumping out zillions of consumer level chips that ran windows. Then there are companies like IBM that just failed to capitalize on what they had or again kept their stuff super expensive and out of the big market for whatever reason. I think lots of us new this day would come for x86. A lot of this IMO is more about the ever decreasing importance of Windows. Windows used to be so much more important than it is today. Linux + the cloud taking over so much of server land and dev/science land has changed things dramatically. Then you have smartphones coming from the other direction. Intel ruled back in the day because more computers ran Windows than anything else and Windows was heavily tied to Intel. There's more stuff non-Windows OSes today than there ever have been. (Mac, Linux, iOS, Android). All those other types of computers not running Windows gave competitors the money they needed to compete with Intel.

akmittal 6y ago

Intel is not even ready for 7nm, Their 7nm is delayed till 2022. So fastest they can do 5nm is in 2023(Seems unlikely though when they couldn't even manage to do 7nm). ARM is not only threat to Intel. AMD caught up with Intel with Zen 2 and surpassed in Zen 3. Zen 4 5nm is planned for end 2021. If they can manage IPC gains same as Zen1-Zen2 or Zen2-Zen3, Intel is in serious trouble.

absolutelyrad 6y ago
They'll catch up. Besides they can skip 7nm as soon as their 5nm is ready. Intel has access to most of the same machines TSMC has.
- akmittal 6y ago
  TSMC is shipping 7nm from mid 2018. When Intel ships 5nm, Apple/ARM is not going to stop development. M1 is their first laptop grade chip. Even if they get 10% IPC gain annually thats gonna make differece to big to catch up.
- perardi 6y ago
  Intel has access to most of the same machines TSMC has. OK, but, where’s the beef? Intel has been stuck for a long time now. Do we know the management and corporate culture can catch up?
samfisher83 6y ago
Sandy Lake is an old architecture and with a lot of tweaks intel on single core it is still competitive. If they could fix their process or maybe just go with TSMC they should be able to become competitive. Its not like Intel hasn't been in this position before with Athlon 64. The one think they used to have was fab advantage.
- akmittal 6y ago
  Its not even about just pure performance, It is about performance per watt. Intel may catch up with performance but matching performance per watt seems very difficult.
  - absolutelyrad 6y ago
    I'd presume that a node shrink would lead to a significant decrease in power consumption.
    - akmittal 6y ago
      Yes for sure it will, but to ARM levels is almost impossible.

tambourine_man 6y ago

I don't know what happened to Intel. Whatever it was, it will be studied for years in Harvard Business School and the likes. They've been consistently a few nodes ahead of the entire industry for decades. But, whatever it was, it was bad. They've been stuck basically at the same node for 5 years or more. And, according to the article, their next CPU will still be at 14nm, which is completely nuts. There's no way you can compete with such brute force disadvantage. It's remarkable to watch, but I wouldn't count on Intel getting their act together anytime soon.

adriancr 6y ago
I think they missed the boat with EUV and tried using existing tech to reach 10/7nm https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-euv-tools-order https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-euv-tools-order TSMC is making massive orders and seems to already be using that. Intel hasn't even started - "Intel is also expected to start deploying EUVL systems sometimes in 2022 when it starts making chips using its 7 nm node."
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  Sure, but why? How have they become this blind and stagnant? Their architecture has always been on the mediocre side but manufacturing has been uncontested for almost 50 years. What makes them suddenly hit a wall while everyone else plowed through?
  - ip26 6y ago
    If the "wall" was the current wavelengths (ArF) just don't cut it, then the competition has gone around the wall with EUV. I have no insider knowledge but EUV is super expensive. It could be that the bean counters tried to delay one node too long.
cbozeman 6y ago
Everyone knows what happened to Intel. They bet everything on their 10nm process - which has greater transistor density than TSMC's 7nm process - and they lost. Intel flew too close to the sun and their wings melted. The vitriol everyone has for them is based on the fact they could have been pumping out cheap 4 / 6 / 8 core chips for people, but instead held the entire world of computing at basically quad-core CPU level for the better part of a decade. And I share that vitriol. I'm happy they're suffering and are in pain. I hope the same thing happens to NVIDIA. I hope the same thing happens to AMD. I relish when a company and when people are made to suffer when they hold back our technological process in the name of fucking quarterly profits.

perardi 6y ago

Does Intel has a dramatically superior architecture? Tough to tell right now, given the process deficit. And anyways, is this transition entirely about performance? Apple is obviously selling it like that, but it seems like they really want the ability to fine-tune the architecture and SoC to their needs. And they’re not the only company with the desire and capital to make that happen; Microsoft, Amazon, Google, they all must desire on some level to finesse systems to meet their specific needs, and Intel isn’t in that business.

ben7799 6y ago

This is hot nonsense.. people in the academic computing world and in chip/system design have been predicting this day would come all the way back in the 1990s. If you looked at anything down at the ASM level and lower it was pretty apparent what was going on. There were plenty of RISC systems that were way out ahead of Intel that lost not because of inferiority but because they were being used for inferior business models. DEC Alpha, Sun UltraSparc, etc.. they lost cause they weren't pumping out zillions of consumer level chips that ran windows. Then there are companies like IBM that just failed to capitalize on what they had or again kept their stuff super expensive and out of the big market for whatever reason. I think lots of us new this day would come for x86. A lot of this IMO is more about the ever decreasing importance of Windows. Windows used to be so much more important than it is today. Linux + the cloud taking over so much of server land and dev/science land has changed things dramatically. Then you have smartphones coming from the other direction. Intel ruled back in the day because more computers ran Windows than anything else and Windows was heavily tied to Intel. There's more stuff non-Windows OSes today than there ever have been. (Mac, Linux, iOS, Android). All those other types of computers not running Windows gave competitors the money they needed to compete with Intel.