
Intel: 10nm Product Era Has Begun, 7nm on Track - frutiger
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15032/intel-2019-fab-update-10nm-hvm-7nm-on-track
======
segfaultbuserr
Daily reminder: Intel is having various technical problems and arguably made
some bad business decisions, but remember, semiconductor manufacturing
processes are no longer directly comparable using the "x nanometer" number. A
comparison should mention their technical differences.

"x nanometer" has became a technically meaningless trademark solely exists for
indicating new generations of process for marketing since ~2009's introduction
of FinFET. It has no actual relation to gate length, metal pitch or gate
pitch. When some people say "5 nm" is the early-stage of nanotechnology,
remember that the gate length actually stays at 25 nm since 2009.

GlobalFoundries' 7 nm process is similar to Intel's 10 nm process. TSMC and
Samsung's 10 nm processes are only slightly denser than Intel's 14 nm in
transistor density. They are actually much closer to Intel's 14 nm process
than they are to Intel's 10 nm process. I'm not saying that Intel is 100%
faithful, the 14 nm in the original ITRS roadmap was described by Intel as "10
nm". Also, DRAM chips are yet another different can of worms, the process
"number" for DRAM chips is not directly comparable with CPU's "number" as
well.

As conventional Moore's Law is reaching the end, the semiconductor firms spent
a lot of efforts to make things as confusing as possible. I'm not a
semiconductor engineer, I'm just an ordinary programmer, I don't fully
understand the funny business going on since 2009, any correction is welcomed.

In other words, Intel still stays on the state-of-art of semiconductor
manufacturing, in line with GlobalFoundries and TSMC, not significantly better
or worse, in contrary to what the "x nanometer" number would make you to
believe, but they do have a lot of production issues.

~~~
dannyw
On the other hand, the top AMD Ryzen (3950X, $749) is considerably faster than
the top Intel CPU (10980XE, $1000).

[https://pcper.com/2019/10/ryzen-9-3950x-benchmark-i9-10980xe...](https://pcper.com/2019/10/ryzen-9-3950x-benchmark-i9-10980xe/)

Technically meaningless, including thinking that Intel is superior to AMD.
They are losing the desktop wars hard to AMD with Ryzen, and starting to lose
ground on the server front.

~~~
ekianjo
AMD is only superior when it comes to performance for parallelized tasks,
single thread performance is still owned by Intel.

Also, your link is biased because it is well documented that AMD performance
significantly improves with faster RAM and they used much faster RAM in the
test only for AMD.

That RAM is very expensive so you need to factor that in the total cost if you
wanted fo be fair when doing price comparison as well.

~~~
nwallin
It's 2019.

If your workloads are limited by single thread performance you need better
software. It's why vulkan and dx12 are a thing. (The single thread limitation
of committing a frame to the GPU has been reduced by an order of magnitude)
It's why C++ has the parallel algorithms library baked into the language.

I get it, threading is hard. But it's honestly not that hard. It's only hard
when you're maintaining some super old program with single threadedness
engineered into its core architecture. (note: this is my day job) Greenfield
applications since 2009 should have had threading built in as a core
assumption.

AMD is doing the right thing by optimizing for multithread performance over
single thread performance. Moore's Law is dead for single cores. It has been
for a decade and a half.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Depends on the program. If it requires, say, to synchronize hundreds of
thousands of entities every 16ms, it's probably better to go with single
threaded instead...

------
NicoJuicy
Slight reminder:

\- they have been saying this for a long time

\- they have also been saying that they won't have a 7nm untill 2021:
[https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-
meeting/...](https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-
meeting/#gs.d3i14m)

It seemed that they had internal problems which caused the delays (
experienced people leaving).

I think they got spooked by TSMC mentioning 3nm for 2023 with 19,x billion in
investments.

Samsung was also mentioning 5nm.

I'll see it when I see it. Currently, I'm not convinced.

Ps. Great timing for the financial results of AMD fyi. Guess when that is :p

Also: yes, I believe in AMD ( = stocks), because they had great execution in a
short timeframe the last years. It's amazing.

For the rest, I'm curious to see what arguments will come here because of
financial investments or because of being "true?" believers :p

~~~
std_throwaway
> (experienced people leaving)

This has me curious on how much of the Management style of Andy Grove is still
alive inside intel. Do they change the company culture and _want_ these people
to leave or was it mismanagement?

~~~
NicoJuicy
I saw multiple people here in HN mentioning this, so I have no idea.

------
chx
They still admit they won't have 10nm desktop chips till 2021 (at least) with
7nm predicted to ship in 2022. [https://www.techpowerup.com/260141/intel-
clarifies-on-10nm-d...](https://www.techpowerup.com/260141/intel-clarifies-
on-10nm-desktop-cpus-still-on-the-table-likely-in-2021) Which of course means
that 10nm will _never_ ship on the desktop. And you bet most mobile chips they
will ship next year will be "Comet Lake" on 14nm and not "Ice Lake" or "Tiger
Lake" 10nm. The 10nm process is completely botched they just can't admit that.

~~~
leeter
As best I can tell Intel kinda painted themselves into a corner with their
14nm+++ process. It produces really high quality parts (no surprise) but that
also means that there is now an expectation of super high clocks on the intel
side. That's not realistic however and I highly doubt their 10nm can currently
match their 14nm+++ process on clocks (yet). It looks like Intel is thus
focusing 10nm on areas where clocks more representative of a new node won't be
an issue: server and mobile.

I'll be honest and say I'm very curious to see how intel tries to escape this
trap they've set for themselves. Unless we see rapid gains in the 10nm process
quality up into the 4.5+ GHz range I wouldn't expect to see 10nm desktop parts
anytime soon.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Maybe that's perfectly okay? I don't care about power efficiency in my large
stationary gaming PC, and I don't see any reason I _should_ care.

~~~
KingMachiavelli
Haha, obviously the largest CPU market is date centers which pretty much only
care about performance/watt. The gaming market is really only useful for PR
and launching new architectures.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
A fine point. I guess I'm not clear which audience we're discussing here?

Data centers presumably don't care at all about those super high clocks, so I
don't think any downgrade in that area would be a problem for them, as long as
overall metrics are good.

------
Nokinside
Million transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm²) is better comparison
metric than the commercial name for the process. Here is handy chart I copied
from somewhere:

    
    
        Tech Node name  (MTr/mm²)
    
        Intel 7nm       (2??) 
        TSMC 5nm EUV    171.3
        TSMC 7nm+ EUV   115.8
        Intel 10nm      100.8
        TSMC 7nm Mobile 96.5
        Samsung 7nm EUV 95.3
        TSMC 7nm HPC    66.7
        Samsung 8nm     61.2
        TSMC 10nm       60.3
        Samsung 10nm    51.8
        Intel 14nm      43.5
        GF 12nm         36.7
        TSMC 12nm       33.8
        Samsung/GF 14nm 32.5
        TSMC 16nm       28.2
    

[https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mtr-mm%C2%B2](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mtr-
mm%C2%B2)

~~~
zepearl
Source of table: [https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-
fabrication](https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication)

Link referenced earlier by "lettergram".

------
greatpatton
I think that this article is really telling about the truth behind the Intel
marketing: [https://semiaccurate.com/2019/10/29/intels-actions-
on-10nm-a...](https://semiaccurate.com/2019/10/29/intels-actions-on-10nm-are-
telling/)

Intel is telling every 3 months that 10mm is around the corner since 2016...
(and even had a token 10mm CPU). Here we are in 2019, and we are still
waiting.

------
tyingq
I wonder if they'll consider the "chiplet" model AMD went with. Yields are
higher with smaller pieces.

~~~
ATsch
Signs currently point towards Intel skipping the chiplet-on-interposer model
AMD is currently using and going directly to 3D stacking i.e. dies directly on
top of other dies.

They did a paper launch of their "Foveros" 3D stacking technology and
"Lakefield" Architecture this year, which is clearly still in very early
stages, and also tellingly announced at their investor meetup. It will
probably be some years before we see any real chips with this.

AMD is speculated to go with a combined model (chiplets, but stacked cache on
the IO Die) with Zen 3/4 and then go full 3D for Zen 5 or so.

~~~
Veedrac
This conjecture sounds wrong to me. 3D stacking and chiplets are
complementary; going only 3D has thermal and cost issues, so it makes sense to
combine both. One shouldn't replace the other any time soon.

~~~
ATsch
Well, the Lakefield design is fully 3D, and Intel has not announced any
chiplet based designs, so either they made it all up, or they're convinced
they can make it work in the next few years.

~~~
Veedrac
Lakefield is a 1+4 core part, it's tiny and won't need chiplets. Chiplets are
necessary only once you get to core counts that won't fit on a single square
of silicon.

Intel have announced co-EMIB, which seems to be their solution to 2D
integration of 3D-stacked parts.

[https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2503/intel-introduces-co-
emib...](https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2503/intel-introduces-co-emib-to-
stitch-multiple-3d-die-stacks-together-adds-omni-directional-interconnects/)

------
birdyrooster
At this rate, an Intel motherboard will have no room for any chipset other
than the CPU. Are we going back to slot form factor for processors?

~~~
benologist
Yes - [https://liliputing.com/2019/10/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-
teardo...](https://liliputing.com/2019/10/intel-ghost-canyon-nuc-teardown-
reveals-removable-the-element-module-inside.html)

------
m0zg
Intel is feeling insecure: AMD is announcing earnings tomorrow, so this fluff
piece was absolutely timed to blunt the impact of that.

~~~
wtallis
> so this fluff piece was absolutely timed to blunt the impact of that.

The timing has nothing to do with AMD. Intel announced their own earnings on
Thursday, and this piece didn't get written and edited in time to run on
Friday so it got delayed to Monday.

~~~
m0zg
If that's the case they should have released it a few days later, to avoid
looking insecure. Because that's what it looks like, and I'm not the only one
on the thread who sees it that way.

------
hartator
While AMD is already selling CPUs at 7nm.

~~~
lettergram
To be fair they measure them differently.

For reference, Intel 10nm has slightly higher transistor density than 7nm TSMC
or Samsung

[https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-
fabrication](https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication)

~~~
mattmar96
Table after the chart says TSMC's 7nm+, currently in mass production, has
higher density than Intel's upcoming 10nm.

TSMC’s 7nm+ 115.8 MTr/mm²

Intel’s 10nm 100.8 MTr/mm² (2018 estimate)

~~~
rkangel
It is completely insane (and awesome) that "Million transistors per square
millimeter" is a useful unit.

------
mc32
After realizing TSMC and AMD surpassed them and are aiming for their lunch,
looks like they got their ducks in a row and are coming out guns blazing.

This will probably satisfy big clients and partners. Long term it will depend
on whether AMD can keep up the pressure. Good times for CPU buyers.

~~~
throwaway2048
Intel has been saying 10nm is ready and in production for almost 3 years now,
not holding my breath.

~~~
mc32
They’re entering high volume production according to the article. 7nm is
basically taped out and they’re working on 5nm.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> _entering high volume production according to the article_

Obviously, we need to know the definition of "high volume production"...

~~~
mc32
The Oregon and Israel fabs, Chandler, AZ coming next quarter. It’s a guess as
to actual volume though. However that they are expanding their production
throughout fabs means they have confidence in their process now (i.e. high
yield).

But as others point out, these are their server parts and not desktop parts
yet. We’ll have to see when those start shipping.

------
netrikare
ark.intel.com indicates that transactional extensions are not present in 10th
gen processors. Did Intel decide to abandon tsx-ni?

~~~
KindOne
Intel is a bit annoying at picking and choosing which instruction sets get
included in the processes. Maybe they just removed it for the 10th gen mobile?
I wonder if they will be included in the 10th gen desktop, if that is ever
going to be released.

I've only looked at a few of the mobile and desktop 9th gen, looks like its
only included in some of the higher end models.

Mobile:

i5-9300H - no

i5-9400H - yes

i7-9750H - no

i7-9850H - yes

Desktop:

i3-9300 - no

i5-9600 - yes

i7-9700 - yes

