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Intel's processes (i.e. turning files on a computer into chips) have been a complete disaster in recent years, to the point of basically missing one of their ke

by mhh__ 6y ago

Intel's processes (i.e. turning files on a computer into chips) have been a complete disaster in recent years, to the point of basically missing one of their key die shrinks entirely as far as I can tell. They are, in a certain sense, suffering from their own success in that their competitors have basically been nonexistant up until Zen came about (and even then only until Zen 3 have Intel truly been knocked off their single thread perch). This has led to them getting cagey, and a bit ridiculous in the sense that they are not only backporting new designs to old processes but also pumping them up to genuinely ridiculous power budgets. With Apple, AMD, and TSMC they have basically been caught with their trousers down by younger and leaner companies. Ultimately this is where Intel need good leadership. The mba solution is to just give up and do something else (e.g. spin off the fabs), but I think they should have the confidence (as far as I can tell this is what they are doing) to rise to the technical challenge - they will probably never have a run like they did from Nehalem to shortly before now, but throwing in the towel means that the probability is zero. Intel have been in situations like this before, e.g. When Itanium was clearly doomed and AMD were doing well (amd64), they came back with new processors and basically ran away to the bank for years - AMD's server market share is still pitiful compared to Intel (10% at most), for example.

ac29 6y ago
> Intel's processes (i.e. turning files on a computer into chips) have been a complete disaster in recent years, to the point of basically missing one of their key die shrinks entirely as far as I can tell. Which one? I dont believe they missed a die shrink, it just took a long time. Intel 14nm came out in 2014 with their Broadwell Processors, and the next node, 10nm came out in 2019 (technically 2018, but very few units shipped that year).
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Cannon Lake I believe was basically cancelled.
  - chx 6y ago
    You wish. It was released because a bunch of Intel managers had bonuses tied to launching 10nm and so they released it.
    - rincebrain 6y ago
      "Released" is a very generous term for a product that had one SKU anyone ever saw outside of 3DMark. (And two if you include the m3-8114Y, which appears to only exist in some uploaded benchmarks as far as anyone can tell.)
      - chx 6y ago
        It wasn't a wide release by any means for sure but the IdeaPad 330-15ICN existed mostly for educational markets but was even sold Chinese retail.
- totalZero 6y ago
  Intel killed the longstanding "tick tock" model in 2016 because of failures with 10nm yield and the higher-than-expected costs of 14nm. Intel got too aggressive with the timeline of the die shrink, which led to them trying to do 10nm on DUV rather than waiting for EUV technology where the light is about an order of magnitude shorter in wavelength than that of DUV (and thus able to resolve today's nano-scale features without all the RETs needed for DUV). From the 2015 10-K [0]: "We expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize our 14nm and our next-generation 10nm process technologies, further optimizing our products and process technologies while meeting the yearly market cadence for product introductions." Spoiler alert: In the five years after shelving the tick-tock model, Intel also missed the yearly market cadence for product introductions. [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/000005086316000105/a10kdocument12262015q4.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/00000508631600...
Symmetry 6y ago
I don't want to council despair but I'm not as sanguine as you either. Intel has had disastrous microarchitectures before. Itanium, P4, and previous ones. But it's never had to worry about recovering from a process disaster before. It might very well be able to but I worry.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I'm not exactly optimistic either, I just think that the doomsaying is overblown (and sometimes looks like a tribal thing from Apple and AMD fans if I'm being honest - i.e. companies aren't your friends)
martinald 6y ago
Yeah, it feels like Intel is sort of in the Pentium 4 days again, but without the Core microarchitecture sitting in the wings, and way more well funded competition - not just AMD. It's hard to see what they can do. AMD is winning on every measure I can see on x86, and M1/Ampere feel like a huge curveball thrown at them. I don't even think they could switch to using TSMC fabs to help them shrink the process size as all the capacity is booked up for years (especially by Apple). I think also the dynamics have changed in the server market in the last 10 years or so. You now have a much more condensed market with this big cloud operators buying millions of CPUs and having much more leverage over them before. I would be surpised if by the end of the 2020s if ARM wasn't standard in nearly all server workloads. Most software can run on it unmodified now - databases all work great on ARM, and most applications are interpreted or run on a VM, so it is pretty easy to move to.

by mhh__ 6y ago

ac29 6y ago

> Intel's processes (i.e. turning files on a computer into chips) have been a complete disaster in recent years, to the point of basically missing one of their key die shrinks entirely as far as I can tell. Which one? I dont believe they missed a die shrink, it just took a long time. Intel 14nm came out in 2014 with their Broadwell Processors, and the next node, 10nm came out in 2019 (technically 2018, but very few units shipped that year).

mhh__ 6y ago
Cannon Lake I believe was basically cancelled.
- chx 6y ago
  You wish. It was released because a bunch of Intel managers had bonuses tied to launching 10nm and so they released it.
  - rincebrain 6y ago
    "Released" is a very generous term for a product that had one SKU anyone ever saw outside of 3DMark. (And two if you include the m3-8114Y, which appears to only exist in some uploaded benchmarks as far as anyone can tell.)
    - chx 6y ago
      It wasn't a wide release by any means for sure but the IdeaPad 330-15ICN existed mostly for educational markets but was even sold Chinese retail.
totalZero 6y ago
Intel killed the longstanding "tick tock" model in 2016 because of failures with 10nm yield and the higher-than-expected costs of 14nm. Intel got too aggressive with the timeline of the die shrink, which led to them trying to do 10nm on DUV rather than waiting for EUV technology where the light is about an order of magnitude shorter in wavelength than that of DUV (and thus able to resolve today's nano-scale features without all the RETs needed for DUV). From the 2015 10-K [0]: "We expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize our 14nm and our next-generation 10nm process technologies, further optimizing our products and process technologies while meeting the yearly market cadence for product introductions." Spoiler alert: In the five years after shelving the tick-tock model, Intel also missed the yearly market cadence for product introductions. [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/000005086316000105/a10kdocument12262015q4.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/00000508631600...

Symmetry 6y ago

I don't want to council despair but I'm not as sanguine as you either. Intel has had disastrous microarchitectures before. Itanium, P4, and previous ones. But it's never had to worry about recovering from a process disaster before. It might very well be able to but I worry.

mhh__ 6y ago
I'm not exactly optimistic either, I just think that the doomsaying is overblown (and sometimes looks like a tribal thing from Apple and AMD fans if I'm being honest - i.e. companies aren't your friends)

martinald 6y ago

Yeah, it feels like Intel is sort of in the Pentium 4 days again, but without the Core microarchitecture sitting in the wings, and way more well funded competition - not just AMD. It's hard to see what they can do. AMD is winning on every measure I can see on x86, and M1/Ampere feel like a huge curveball thrown at them. I don't even think they could switch to using TSMC fabs to help them shrink the process size as all the capacity is booked up for years (especially by Apple). I think also the dynamics have changed in the server market in the last 10 years or so. You now have a much more condensed market with this big cloud operators buying millions of CPUs and having much more leverage over them before. I would be surpised if by the end of the 2020s if ARM wasn't standard in nearly all server workloads. Most software can run on it unmodified now - databases all work great on ARM, and most applications are interpreted or run on a VM, so it is pretty easy to move to.