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How Intel and AMD spend R&D is structurally different. AMD is fabless so they only have to focus their R&D exclusively on chip design. Intel has to build foun

How Intel and AMD spend R&D is structurally different. AMD is fabless so they only have to focus their R&D exclusively on chip design. Intel has to build foundries, fund manufacturing R&D, as well as chip design. It's a bit ghoulish but Intel's saving grace may be an invasion of Taiwan.

LegitShady 4y ago
On the flipside this is also why Intel is more profitable per chip in the long run - they own their own fabs, the cut AMD pays to TSMC to make their chips (cost, profit, and research/overhead) stays with intel. And intel is somehow still making chips with near performance parity to AMD several nodes behind on 10nm+++ - when intel catches up they will again kick AMD on multiple levels. Intel is in a good place. The question people should be asking is why its so close at all if AMD is several nodes ahead. why is 5nm and 6nm TSMC only competitive with intel and not crushing it? Their performance per watt at high load (and not at idle) is AMDs biggest differentiator. When intel goes to smaller nodes they'll gain more thermal headroom to pack more and faster cores than AMD. The current modern tech youtubers are asking many of the wrong questions. I watched gamersnexus crowing about AMD efficiency in the highest tier chips and asked "people buying race cars care about speed more than efficiency - why are you downplaying intel's ultrafast chips on 10nm+++ vs amd's smaller and more efficient nodes, and talking about their fuel mileage for a market segment differentiated by performance?" Theres a lot of nonsense going around.
- nier 4y ago
  Do you mean sports cars? Because efficiency in race cars is quite the topic. https://guidehouseinsights.com/news-and-views/efficiency-is-as-important-to-racing-as-sheer-speed https://guidehouseinsights.com/news-and-views/efficiency-is-...
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    sure
- Panzer04 4y ago
  It's even worse than that - the youtubers don't compare like for like. They should pick a common state for comparison (eg. same power or same performance), instead it's just a free for all, and whoever picks the lower power cap has better efficiency, whoever picks the higher has better performance. CPU efficiency is so nonlinear at high power levels as to make comparison meaningless if they aren't matched.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    this is bad because certain market segments, like the most profitable consumer ones, are differentiated by performance not performance per watt. Picking an arbitrary power cap and testing them both there will tell you which is most efficient, which is a bit like telling a lamborghini customer that your honda gets better gas mileage - its not something he really cares about. CPU efficiency is an interesting number to the tech youtubers who focus on it, but is not that market differentiator at the highest end most profitable part of the market, and only matters to them. The AMD 7950x is very fast chip which is much more efficient than its intel counterpart, but at the top end of the market what matters is who performs better, not their fuel mileage. You'd be investigating a number interesting to testers but not consumers likely to buy those products - its a waste of time and effort.
    - Panzer04 4y ago
      I agree, if I'm buying a top-end consumer chip I only really care about raw performance - finishing a compilation run 20s faster 20x a day or running my Grand strategy game faster in the laggy endgame :P. I guess from a practical perspective, if you aren't modifying the chip clocks then yeah, they are talking about the right thing. But from a technical perspective, I'm more interested in the underlying architecture performance, which is to say: If the intel chip is set to a Power Limit of 100w, and the AMD chip is set to a Power Limit of 100w, what does performance look like then? Because it's nearly meaningless to run one processor at 250w and the other at 150w, then say the 150w chip is more efficient. Processor power skyrockets at high voltages and clocks, so likely the intel chip can use 50% less power for 10% less performance, if desired - Intel merely made the (correct, imo) calculus that maximal performance is more important than efficiency for this class of chip. I think we pretty much agree - I just think it would be interested to have a more accurate architectural efficiency/performance comparison (which would also help when choosing eg. a laptop where those numbers DO matter)

LegitShady 4y ago

On the flipside this is also why Intel is more profitable per chip in the long run - they own their own fabs, the cut AMD pays to TSMC to make their chips (cost, profit, and research/overhead) stays with intel. And intel is somehow still making chips with near performance parity to AMD several nodes behind on 10nm+++ - when intel catches up they will again kick AMD on multiple levels. Intel is in a good place. The question people should be asking is why its so close at all if AMD is several nodes ahead. why is 5nm and 6nm TSMC only competitive with intel and not crushing it? Their performance per watt at high load (and not at idle) is AMDs biggest differentiator. When intel goes to smaller nodes they'll gain more thermal headroom to pack more and faster cores than AMD. The current modern tech youtubers are asking many of the wrong questions. I watched gamersnexus crowing about AMD efficiency in the highest tier chips and asked "people buying race cars care about speed more than efficiency - why are you downplaying intel's ultrafast chips on 10nm+++ vs amd's smaller and more efficient nodes, and talking about their fuel mileage for a market segment differentiated by performance?" Theres a lot of nonsense going around.

nier 4y ago
Do you mean sports cars? Because efficiency in race cars is quite the topic. https://guidehouseinsights.com/news-and-views/efficiency-is-as-important-to-racing-as-sheer-speed https://guidehouseinsights.com/news-and-views/efficiency-is-...
- LegitShady 4y ago
  sure
Panzer04 4y ago
It's even worse than that - the youtubers don't compare like for like. They should pick a common state for comparison (eg. same power or same performance), instead it's just a free for all, and whoever picks the lower power cap has better efficiency, whoever picks the higher has better performance. CPU efficiency is so nonlinear at high power levels as to make comparison meaningless if they aren't matched.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  this is bad because certain market segments, like the most profitable consumer ones, are differentiated by performance not performance per watt. Picking an arbitrary power cap and testing them both there will tell you which is most efficient, which is a bit like telling a lamborghini customer that your honda gets better gas mileage - its not something he really cares about. CPU efficiency is an interesting number to the tech youtubers who focus on it, but is not that market differentiator at the highest end most profitable part of the market, and only matters to them. The AMD 7950x is very fast chip which is much more efficient than its intel counterpart, but at the top end of the market what matters is who performs better, not their fuel mileage. You'd be investigating a number interesting to testers but not consumers likely to buy those products - its a waste of time and effort.
  - Panzer04 4y ago
    I agree, if I'm buying a top-end consumer chip I only really care about raw performance - finishing a compilation run 20s faster 20x a day or running my Grand strategy game faster in the laggy endgame :P. I guess from a practical perspective, if you aren't modifying the chip clocks then yeah, they are talking about the right thing. But from a technical perspective, I'm more interested in the underlying architecture performance, which is to say: If the intel chip is set to a Power Limit of 100w, and the AMD chip is set to a Power Limit of 100w, what does performance look like then? Because it's nearly meaningless to run one processor at 250w and the other at 150w, then say the 150w chip is more efficient. Processor power skyrockets at high voltages and clocks, so likely the intel chip can use 50% less power for 10% less performance, if desired - Intel merely made the (correct, imo) calculus that maximal performance is more important than efficiency for this class of chip. I think we pretty much agree - I just think it would be interested to have a more accurate architectural efficiency/performance comparison (which would also help when choosing eg. a laptop where those numbers DO matter)