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> The Meteor Lake CPU [...] has obvious difficulties in reaching high clock frequencies, Not sure where that's coming from? The released parts are mobile chip

• adrian_b 3y ago
  The 5.1 GHz Intel Core Ultra 9 processor 185H is the replacement for the 5.4 GHz Intel Core i9-13900H Processor of previous year. Both are 45-W CPUs with big integrated GPUs and almost identical features in the SoC. No liquid cooling needed for either of them, just standard 14" or 15" laptops without special cooling, or NUC-like small cases, because they do not need discrete GPUs. Both CPUs have the same microarchitecture of the big cores. If Intel had been able to match the clock frequencies of their previous generation, they would have done that, because it is embarrassing that Meteor Lake wins only the multi-threaded benchmarks, due to the improved energy efficiency, but loses in the single-threaded benchmarks, due to lower turbo clock frequency, when compared to the last year's products. Moreover, Intel could easily have launched a Raptor Lake Refresh variant of i9-13900H, with a clock frequency increased to 5.6 GHz. They have not done this only to avoid an internal competition for Meteor Lake, so they have launched only HX models of Raptor Lake Refresh, which do not compete directly with Meteor Lake (because they need a discrete GPU). During the last decade, the products made at TSMC with successive generations of their processes had a continuous increase of their clock frequencies. On the other hand Intel had a drop in clock frequency at all switches in the manufacturing processes, at 14-nm with the first Broadwell models, then at 10-nm with Cannon Lake and Ice Lake (and even Tiger Lake could not reach clock frequencies high enough for desktops), and now with Meteor Lake in the new Intel 4 process. With the 14-nm and 10-nm (now rebranded as Intel 7), Intel has succeeded to greatly increase the maximum clock frequencies after many years of tuning and tweaking. Now, with Meteor Lake, this will not happen, because they will pass immediately to different better manufacturing processes. According to rumors, the desktop variant of Arrow Lake, i.e. Arrow Lake S, will be manufactured at TSMC in order to ensure high-enough clock frequencies, and not with the Intel 20A, which will be used only for the laptop products. Intel 18A is supposed to be the process that Intel will be able to use for several years, like their previous processes. It remains to be seen how much time will pass until Intel will become able to reach again 6.0 GHz in the Intel 18A process.
  • ajross 3y ago
    That's getting a little convoluted. I still don't see how this substantiates that Intel 4 "has obvious difficulties in reaching high clock frequencies". Intel is shipping competitive clock frequencies on Intel 4 vs. everyone in the industry except the most recent generation of their own RPL parts, which have the advantage of being being up-bins of an evolved and mature process. That sounds pretty normal to me? New processes launch with conservative binning and as yields improve you can start selling the outliers in volume. And... it seems like you agree, by pointing out that this happened with Intel 7 and 14nm too. Basically: this sounds like you're trying to spin routine manufacturing practices as a technical problem. Intel bins differently than AMD (and especially Apple, who barely distinguish parts at all), and they always have.
    • adrian_b 3y ago
      I have also pointed that while for Intel this repeats their previous two process launches, which is not a good sign, TSMC has never had such problems recently. While one reason why TSMC did not have such problems is that they have made more incremental changes from one process variant to another, avoiding any big risks, the other reason is that Intel has repeatedly acted as if they had been unable to estimate from simulations the performance characteristics of their future processes and they have always been caught by surprise by inferior experimental results compared to predictions, so they always had to switch the product lines from plan A to plan B during the last decade, unlike the previous decade when all appeared to always go as planned. A normal product replacement strategy is for the new product to match most of the characteristics of the old product that is replaced, but improve on a few of them. Much too frequently in recent years many Intel new products have improved some characteristics only with the price of making worse other characteristics. For example raising the clock frequency with the price of also increased power consumption, increasing the number of cores but removing AVX-512, or, like in Meteor Lake, raising the all-cores-active clock-frequency with the price of lowering the few-cores-active clock frequency. While during the last decade Intel has frequently progressed in the best case by making two steps forward and one step backward, all competitors have marched steadily forwards.