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Intel's E2200 "Mount Morgan" IPU at Hot Chips 2025
- trebligdivad 1y agoThe ability to connect to 4 hosts makes it seem like MRIOV all over again! Still, it does look like a fun device from the 'big arm chip with lots of connectivity' side
- mappu 1y agoThis is Intel making a 24 core Neoverse N2 server on TSMC - not their ISA, not their core design, and not their fab
- matt-p 1y agoYep, it's only recently they've even properly started cranking out 10nm themselves. Pretty embarrassing. I wonder what future we have if everyone is just sat ontop of TSMC, not great.
- colechristensen 1y agoMissteps happen but I have a feeling Intel's fab is going to be forced to be near the leading edge one way or another. The US government has plenty of levers to pull to manipulate the global semiconductor market.
- mhh__ 1y agoWould be amazed if the US gov's industrial espionage program wasn't helping intel out (spying agencies do this, and are allowed to pay bribes)
- wtallis 1y agoYou must be using odd definitions for "properly" and "recently". Intel started volume shipments of 10nm-family parts for laptops in 2019, servers in 2021, and desktops in 2022. They've since moved most of their products off of the 10nm family and onto EUV-based processes: two generations of laptop parts, one generation of desktop parts, and the CPU chiplets of last year's server parts (which still use "Intel 7" for the IO chiplets). Additionally, the second and third round of desktop parts released on 10nm (aka "Intel 7") are now known to have pushed clocks and voltages somewhat beyond the limits of the process, leading to embarrassing reliability problems and microcode updates that hurt performance. Intel has squeezed everything they can out of their 10nm and have mostly put it behind them, so talking about it like they only recently ramped production is totally wrong about where they are in the lifecycle.
- aseipp 1y agoWhat? Intel has been doing large scale production runs of their 10nm node for years now. If you're talking about Raptor Lake failures, that was one generation of products on that note, there has also never been any indication AFAIK that e.g. Emerald Rapids suffered the same oxidization/voltage failures the consumer line did despite being on the same process node. They're already moving on from all this, really.
- SecretDreams 1y agoThis is some quite outdated/interesting hot takes.
- Palomides 1y agothe arm cores are absolutely the least interesting part of this thing, does it matter much if they're outsourced?
- wmf 1y agoBarefoot was always on TSMC so why change now.
- pclmulqdq 1y agoThis isn't really a server. This is a NIC with some small cores to help handle management functions. The server you plug it into will have hundreds of x86 cores.
- kjs3 1y agoAnd it's not even the first time Intel has shipped an ARM for this use case; see "Intel StrongARM".
- matt-p 1y agoHah, I was not imagining it https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+E2200+%40+2.20GHz&id=1136 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+E2200... same name as an old cpu.
- blakehawkins 1y agoI had one of these Color me confused
- kasabali 1y agoit was a good chip. overclocked pretty well.
- saltcured 1y agoSo I should hold out for the E6600, and then wait for the price to drop on a pin-compatible Q6600 that has two of those inside the same package?
- jeffbee 1y agoIt's quite interesting. Basically Nitro on a stick. For the "repatriation" crowd this seems appealing. But would you invest in the software necessary to exploit this, knowing that Intel could lose interest or just go bankrupt with little warning?
- lenerdenator 1y agoI think at this point, it's clear that the US government will not let Intel go bankrupt without a serious effort to put the company in healthy financial standing first. Whether or not that's a good thing, well, people have their opinions, but they're considered a national security necessity.
- wmf 1y agoI wouldn't be surprised if Google buys the IP since they're the only customer.
- pyvpx 1y agoHow, though? Does the TPU team (literally or logically) map to owning IPU h/w successfully? (I miss having these kinds of convos on twitter as networkservice ;)
- pwarner 1y agoI believe they have other custom silicon beyond TPUs so it wouldn't be crazy to take this in house if Intel really cans it.
- pclmulqdq 1y agoThere's a lot more silicon at Google aside from the TPU team, including their own previous NICs.
- pyvpx 1y agoNot that my memory is ironclad, but I don’t recall any custom IP or even FPGA attempts at Google re: host networking or NICs. Any good search terms I should try to enlighten myself? thanks!
- YesThatTom2 1y agoI hope their Linux code isn’t as out-dated and buggy as their IPMI system.
- rwmj 1y agoIntel putting CPUs on an expansion card? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Inboard_386 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Inboard_386
- kjs3 1y agoMore like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM.
- msuniverse2026 1y agoIs the name based on the Australian Mount Morgan that was once the largest gold mine in the world? One of the owners of it invested everything earned from the mine into Persian oil exploration and created what eventually became BP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Knox_D%27Arcy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Knox_D%27Arcy