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Intel's Process Roadmap to 2025: with 4nm, 3nm, 20A and 18A?
- cbozeman 5y agoI sincerely hope this doesn't turn out the way the announcements for Intel's 10nm and 7nm process nodes turned out. We were promised a lot of fantastic technology and got a lot of disappointment. Even if Intel manages to adhere to this aggressive technological roadmap, it's still unclear to me what the market for x86-based machines is going to look like 3-5 years down the road. COVID-19-related PC sales are more of an anomaly than an actual trend; the knock-on effect though of that development promoting an embrace of remote work could possibly turn things around for x86, but I'm still left wondering why most people would want / need x86 when Apple's M1 chips clearly demonstrate that ARM-based solutions are not just sufficient, but potentially superior.
- baybal2 5y agoYou hit the nail. Potential fab clients look now at Intel, and keep guessing what's been going on with both their 10nm process, and their fab offering for the last 5 years. Now people keep seeing Intel setting ambitious new targets, and keeping missing them. Would they bet their tapeout on a fab like this now? No. The least worst thing Intel can do for itself now is to disclose what in the world was actually happening which led to the current situation. They long missed the window when their leading edge offer can capture first few clients ready to pay any premium for it.
- anotherman554 5y agoSony and Microsoft consoles are running x86 hardware so demand is certainly not just driven by COVID-19, people would want those machines regardless. There is no current consumer option to pair an ARM processor with a high end graphic card. I don't know what the future holds but it's pretty obvious why people want x86 at the moment.
- Dracophoenix 5y agoNot for consumers yet, but a demonstration recently made by Nvidia[1] involving ARM+dGPu(+Linux!) proves that world isn't as far away as you think. Assuming pure cloud gaming experiences such as Xbox 365 or Playstation Infinity don't become the only way to play console games over the next decade and half, An ARM-based Xbox or Playstation could happen by the next generation or the one following. [1] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/07/nvidia-shows-off-rtx-and-dlss-on-arm-using-arch-linux https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/07/nvidia-shows-off-rtx-a...
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- anotherman554 5y agoSure it "could" happen but they would actually need a reason to switch. They aren't selling Laptops where battery life matters.
- monocasa 5y agoThese are the 10nm and 7nm processes. They're just retconning the names. 10nm+ is Intel 7, 7nm is now Intel 4, 7nm+ is Intel 3, 5nm is Intel 20A.
- colinmhayes 5y agoIt makes sense. Intel marketing must be kicking themselves with all the press about them not being on 10nm while TSMC is on 5 even though 7nm is the best anyone but apple can get from TSMC and Intel's 10nm is (marginally)better than TSMC's 7.
- mysterydip 5y agoSounds like the "equivalent speed" advertising war back in the day between Intel and AMD.
- lumost 5y agoSo there is a weird factor here that we only know what intel tells us about 10nm. The actual parts that have shipped on 10nm have not been competitive with AMD parts at 7nm, or Apple at 5nm. When Apple/AMD were shipping Intel beating parts folks were quick to dismiss it as a byproduct of TSMC's process. Is intel's chip design so much worse that AMD can trounce them on a substantially worse process? Or is Intel 10nm just not very good.
- monocasa 5y agoWhen the chips worked they had better perf/gate, but Intel had a lot of yield issues, making the perf/$ ratio worse.
- adrian_b 5y agoNot true. The 10 nm Intel Ice Lake Server has much worse perf/W than the 7 nm Epyc made by TSMC, and this is what matters. That means that at the same power limit and the same number of active cores the Ice Lake Server clock frequency is much lower, or at the same clock frequency and same number of active cores the power consumption of Ice Lake Server is much higher. The SuperFin 10 nm process used by Tiger Lake allows much higher maximum clock frequencies, up to 5.0 GHz, than the Ice Lake Server 10 nm process, and it also has a better perf/W, but even the SuperFin 10 nm does not reach the perf/W of the 7 nm TSMC process. If the previous claims made by Intel are true, the process used for Alder Lake, now renamed "Intel 7" will be the first Intel process that is better in perf/W than the 7 nm TSMC process. Nevertheless, it will be still worse than the "5 nm" process that has been used by TSMC in high volume products (Apple) for more than a year.
- totalZero 5y agoOn the one hand, x86 is (eventually) going the way of the dodo for some of the biggest datacenter customers, which is a large part of the reason that Intel has once again opened itself up to the prospect of foundry. On the other hand, x86 is so ubiquitous for PC that it would take a sea change for Apple Silicon to take over. Users and businesses are entrenched and this isn't the first time that Apple has run a different architecture from the rest of the PC crowd. I, for one, prefer my x86 MBP to the newfangled M1 because of RAM, compatibility, external display support, and number of ports. These limitations are all a function of implementation, not inherent to Apple Silicon, but they influence my preferences nonetheless. COVID-19 has changed the way that work is balanced against everything else in our lives, and I view its impact on the chip market as demand creation rather than a demand spike. We will never go back 100% to the way that things were prior to the pandemic; big shocks all have that in common. The hybrid model of work from home as a complement to office work means that people/companies will need to buy and maintain more hardware. I share your hope that this doesn't turn out the way the delayed nodes did. Intel's 10nm and 7nm setbacks started in the Krzanich days during the doldrums of the PC glut. People were mobile, phone innovations were booming, and no substantial PC advancements came to the fore during that time. I think we can give Intel some benefit of the doubt and assume that they aren't dumb enough to repeat the error of announcing a road map for which there is no road map...especially because the tick-tock model is already a thing of the past and exerts no expectations nowadays.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> Users and businesses are entrenched What dependency do you think most users and business have on the instruction set architecture, even if you ignore that you can translate?
- wmf 5y agoIn many cases the dependency is native (not virtualized) Windows and Windows doesn't run natively on any good ARMs.
- Denvercoder9 5y agoThere's an unbelievable amount of software out there for which porting is either not viable or not economical.
- stefan_ 5y agoIf architecture doesn't matter, why on earth would you think x86 is a negative. The most ARM can ever hope for is that people don't care or notice it's ARM.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoEnergy efficiency is a thing that some people (including phone manufacturers) care about.
- cbsmith 5y agoAs much as ARM is associated with efficiency, the instruction set itself is largely irrelevant to the performance of modern CPUs. x86s CPUs are translating x86 instructions into the CPU's native instruction set, and while that used to impose some non-trivial overhead, it's been trivial for quite some time.
- smoldesu 5y ago> I'm still left wondering why most people would want / need x86 when Apple's M1 chips clearly demonstrate that ARM-based solutions are not just sufficient, but potentially superior. Simple, I use Linux and MacOS cannot run the software that I need to use on a daily basis. The most powerful Apple Silicon you can buy right now still can't quite beat my 2014 beater-PC in raw performance, which also doesn't exactly instill confidence in it.
- GiorgioG 5y agoI have an M1 MacBook Air and I love it. But it's no replacement for my Threadripper 1950X / RTX 3080 for work/gaming. x86 gives me choices. I can run Windows, Linux, etc. With M1...I'm at the mercy of Apple's closed-system. Sure, there are folks working on getting Linux working on the M1, but there's no guarantee that Apple will let you keep running/installing Linux. You're one Apple firmware update away from bricking your device/alternate-OS.
- shawnz 5y agoWho says Apple will be the only vendor of successful ARM desktops? It seems like it's only a matter of time before other vendors catch up. The point is simply that Apple demonstrated the viability of ARM in those use cases.
- imtringued 5y agoWindows on ARM laptops existed long before the M1 and they didn't catch on. It's Apple that is late to the party.
- shawnz 5y agoBut like you said yourself, they didn't catch on. Therefore I wouldn't describe those vendors as "successful". Apple was the first vendor to achieve that. It may be that the Qualcomm chips used by the majority of those devices just aren't competitive enough to replace desktop use cases.
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- 14u2c 5y agoRetail PC sales are only a small portion of the x86 market. The vast majority of corporate PCs will continue to use x86 in the foreseeable future for compatibility reasons. On the datacenter / cloud side providers are trying to make inroads with ARM, such as Amazon's Graviton, but are meeting similar resistance. Additionally we have yet to see x86 on the TSMC 5nm process. Making that leap once Apple's reservations expire may remove much of the performance gap.
- qalmakka 5y agoI think one big reason for this is how disappointing on the shelves ARM chips are compared with Apple's offering, and the lack of a standardized platform like the PC was for x86. UEFI on AArch64 is a good start, but we really need to reach a point where a single image can be installed on every ARM desktop machine, like it has been for decades for Intel and AMD. Also, the lack of FOSS drivers for lots of boards mean that you risk getting stuck on a specific kernel version forever.l All of this is absolutely unacceptable, as long as there's x86_64 out there that's competitive and doesn't suffer from these downsides.
- shadilay 5y agoAbsolutely. x86 standardization has made generations of developers forget what it was like coding for a specific machine. ARM is still far behind despite the enthusiasm.
- ksec 5y ago>t's still unclear to me what the market for x86-based machines is going to look like 3-5 years down the road. ~750M of PC are used in Cooperate and Business. And if IBM mainframe has taught us anything business couldn't give a f what ISA they are using. They want 100% ( when possible ) backward compatibility. Considering most Business PC are already using low end x86 CPU, and they have not been CPU bottlenecked for long, I mean most of them are still using PC with HDD for all sort of reasons. So I dont see them switching any time soon. Excluding that the vast majority of PC are Laptop and Gaming PCs. Gaming wont switch. Laptop is a complicated issue. And I think it sort of depends on Microsoft and how aggressive will Apple price their MacBook Air. I see no reason why they cant have the lowest cost MacBook starting at $799 while maintaining the same margin. On Server I think x86 is pretty much done, at least in the HyperScaler market. The whole reason why Amazon is an Intel foundry customer is because Amazon are moving everything they could to Graviton. So you either loss Amazon as a customer leaving them to buy some x86 for some smaller part of their AWS, or you try and Fab them a chip they want. And I believe, for political reason, Intel will gain lots of foundry customers. So while a potential lost of 30-40% of their DC market in the next 5 years. x86 should still be a healthy state in 5 years time.
- pankajdoharey 5y agoTSMC Announced a 2nm soon after Intel announced it can catch up https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/28/tsmc-2nm-production-set-for-2023/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/28/tsmc-2nm-production-set-for-2...
- killingtime74 5y agoSo cool they are past nanometre now, Ångström!
- wtfishackernews 5y agox Nanometer or y Ångström isn't based on physical size anymore and is just a marketing term. From the article: >A lot of the industry, for whatever reason, hasn’t learned that these numbers aren’t actually a physical measurement. They used to be, but when we moved from 2D planar transistors to 3D FinFET transistors, the numbers became nothing more than a marketing tool.
- bostonsre 5y ago> Intel 20A: Previously known as Intel 5nm. Moving to double digit naming, with the A standing for Ångström, or 10A is equal to 1nm Was going to say wtf.. I could be half asleep but the numbers don't add up. 20a == 5nm != 10a == 1nm
- amelius 5y ago> ... is just a marketing term. Who are they trying to fool? Terms like nanometer and Angstrom obviously don't mean much to average consumers, so these are not the target. But engineers rightfully call bullshit on the use of these terms. So who are they targeting with this?
- monocasa 5y agoLol, way to play the game I guess. It's not Intel 4nm, but 'Intel 4', which was Intel 7nm and Intel 7nm+ is now Intel 3. Retconning Intel 10nm+ as Intel 7. Makes you wonder if the same thing with the initial 10nm failures where a lot of management bonuses were tied to a specific number in the release is happening here too, or if it's just them trying to recalibrate those marketing literature when the competition is a node worse for the equivalent nm value. Edit: It literally says this in the article: 2021 H2, Intel 7: Previously known as 10nm Enhanced Super Fin or 10ESF 2022 H2, Intel 4: Previously known as Intel 7nm. 2023 H2, Intel 3: Previously known as Intel 7+ 2024, Intel 20A: Previously known as Intel 5nm.
- jimbob45 5y agoYeah, it’s dishonest, but the consumers of their processors most often look at benchmarks, not nm width. The only people this might actually fool will be casual stock traders.
- monocasa 5y agoYeah, I don't blame them that much when tech news always had to be "TSMC 5nm.. essentially equivalent to Intel 7nm" when talking nodes. The numbers have been made up for a while (even on the Intel side). Some of those numbers are very curious though. Intel has historically had an issue with managers gaming bonus structures and some of this reeks of that too. "We're totally shipping Intel 7 this year (because it's what was 10nm+)"
- rrss 5y agohow is it dishonest? the numbers are basically arbitrary anyway (the only metric even close to these figures is fin width, which is not really a metric of primary interest), and they've chosen to realign to numbers that more closely match comparable TSMC nodes and acknowledge that it doesn't really measure anything by dropping the 'nanometer'.
- monocasa 5y agoWell, they didn't align with TSMC. They end up jumping ahead of TSMC by a node.
- MikusR 5y agoQualcomm is the company named in the press release as a partner for Intel 20A
- Theodores 5y agoI am a big Intel fan and floating point and single core performance have kept me buying. However I think that TSMC have the gap on Intel and that this is widely perceived to be true in Asia, which is where the manufacturing happens these days. TSMC are ahead in part due to the yields they are getting from their EUV machines and the fantastic customers they are getting. Their business model is working out. Meanwhile Intel are shuffling a few top managers around which isn't the same thing as making the investment in people and processes that TSMC are doing. The metric of single core performance has been the same for years from Intel and 11th Gen has come in for criticism because they didn't move to the next level process. I am rooting for Intel but the momentum is with TSMC.
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- lholden 5y agoTotally not going to be confusing to buy an "Intel 3" i7 or an "Intel 7" i3. :D. I'm a little sad they went "Intel 4" instead of "Intel 5" though.
- slownews45 5y agoAngstrom's? I think the connection to actual feature sizes is long gone, and not sure intel 3nm is really comparable with TSMC? Anyone have a process comparison? Also, key issue - ignore the roadmap and just start shipping you 10 and 7nm process stuff. Seriously, every time I read about a TSMC process it seems to already be in risk production. Then in the next year all of a sudden Apple and friends are releasing nice product. The hamster wheel here with apple funding huge $$ into TSMC must be amazing as well. With intel we've been hearing about 7nm forever, how the intel chips are going to crush (2x performance etc) AMD chips. But they never ship these things.
- monocasa 5y agoIntel 3 is what used to be called Intel 7nm+, which is more or less equivalent to newer batches of TSMC N5.
- slownews45 5y agoPerfect - thank you!
- smoldesu 5y agoI mean, this is nothing new. If you want newer processes, AMD does a pretty good job of keeping their Zen architecture on the cutting edge without under-engineering the end product. Intel's bag has always been about selling very specific things to specific audiences: bare-metal virtualization for people on Windows/MacOS (rip), super-wide SIMD busses, special overclockable models, IMEI, the list goes on. Intel, much like Apple, is selling a product that supposedly offers a better "experience" than their competitors, which moves like gangbusters in the corporate sector.
- imtringued 5y agoThose numbers refer to what a planar transistor would have to look like to achieve the same density. Of course nobody is actually using planar transistors anymore.
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- _carbyau_ 5y agoShowing my ignorance... Is intel really competing with TSMC or with ASML? (ASML make the EUV machines TSMC uses) Why can't Intel buy ASML machines and do what TSMC does? I understand there is a lot more that goes on around the ASML machines, but Intel should be able to do that bit right?
- monocasa 5y agoWith TSMC. One of the announcements here is that Intel will be getting literally the first of the new batch of ASML's machines.
- raverbashing 5y agoThey do buy from them (and invest in them). But as far as understand, ASML is one piece of the puzzle. There are several other parts of the process that are not touched by ASML
- IanCutress 5y agoIntel owns just under 5% of ASML. TSMC owns a bit of ASML as well. So does Samsung.
- ginko 5y ago20 ampere? That's a lot of current for a microprocessor.
- mjburgess 5y ago1 angstrom = 0.1 nm 10 A = 1 nm
- ginko 5y agoThat'd be Å not A
- throwawaylinux 5y agoYou joke, but CPUs can draw hundreds of amps.
- xondono 5y agoIt’s actually quite little. Most modern CPUs run at ~1V, which means 20A ~ 20W CPU. Ultrabooks are able to pull off 45W, so double of that.
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- yourenotsmart 5y agoI wish Intel all the success, but we already know they're excellent at writing roadmaps. They just suck at executing them.
- dawnbreez 5y agoFrankly, this has me excited. I can't wait to see what new, exciting tech AMD invents to eat Intel's lunch, again.
- cjdell 5y agoWhen I saw "20A" and "18A" I thought maybe they'd moved to using silicon atom diameters as a unit of measure, which seemed to make sense. Turns out it means 10^-10m and a silicon atom is actually ~2A diameter.
- tempodox 5y agoHa, I first thought they meant “Ampere” (vaporizing the conductor at those numbers). Using “Å” would make it clear they mean “Ångström”. Someone should tell Intel that Unicode exists.
- throw0101a 5y ago> Someone should tell Intel that Unicode exists. How easy/hard is it to type accented characters on Windows? On Apple systems you simply press-and-hold the letter, and you get pop-up with various options. Holding <shift-a> gives: À, Á, Â, Ä, Ã, Ã, Å, Ā.
- tpxl 5y agoOn Linux (and Windows too IIRC), you hit AltGr + accent key (number row on my layout) -> ÃǍÂĂÅÀĄÀȦÁÄ.
- tempodox 5y agoThey have an app buried somewhere that lets you select and insert Unicode characters from a scrollable table, but you have to find it first. In MS Word you can open that window from a menu command.