

Intel Announces 14nm, 22nm Atom Chips Officially - Andys
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20110517123659_Intel_Announces_14nm_22nm_Atom_Chips_Officially.html

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krig
14nm is pretty amazing. To think that technology built at this scale is part
of consumer electronics (and even, cheap) is pretty staggering.

For reference (from wikipedia):

2 nm — diameter of DNA helix

20 nm — width of bacterial flagellum

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jules
Another point of reference: 14 nm is about 126 silicium atoms in a row.

Another amazing number: if a chip is 2cm across and runs at 2 GHz then a light
ray can go from one side to the other side of the chip about 10 times in a
clock cycle. Note that light goes around the earth about 7 times per second.
In other words: suppose you have quick child who takes one step of 20cm in
each clock cycle. Then the child walks around the earth about 7 times per
second.

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Derbasti
A long standing dream of mine is a laptop that will run a whole workday on one
charge.

This announcement sounds like this could finally happen in the next year or
two. I look forward to the day when I can leave my battery charger at home.

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muyuu
My AAO on an 8-cell battery already does this. It gets around 10 hours if I
set screen brightness to medium-low.

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Derbasti
I spend 40 hours a week on that computer. I would rather not have to strain my
eyes every workday for years. But I guess for less intensive use your laptop
is already sufficient.

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Andys
Apparently Atom-based smartphones and tablets are still "coming soon any day
now"

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pieter
You're right, but Intel is working on it.. One major problem so far is that
Intel didn't have ANY SoC's, and no-one wants to ship a 5W chipset next to the
processor on their tablet. Their future SoC's might change that, but it's
still unclear how much demand there is for their chips.

The big difference with Intel's approach and ARM's approach: with ARM you can
license the core and build your own SoC, which means there are many different
SoC's to choose from for handset manufacturers. Being limited to just the
chips Intel chooses to produce won't be very attractive, especially as you
loose a very nice way of product differentiation. I wonder how handset
manufacturers will work with that.

If there's going to be competition between ARM and Intel on this scale,
they'll probably both have their own pro's: ARM is very customizable, up to
the point where you can choose your own FPU next to all the other stuff you
put on an SoC. Intel might have the advantage of power consumption and speed
if they get their act together, and will be able to use smaller manufacturing
processes earlier (11nm), but you'll have to use Intel's SoC, which so far
don't exist, are unproven and probably will never offer the freedom ARM SoC's
have.

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nextparadigms
I don't think Intel will beat ARM in power consumption. ARM chips are just one
processing node behind, so when Intel will be at 14 nm, ARM chips will be at
20nm.

Also Intel is still struggling to get just one Atom core to a low enough power
consumption level. They can't improve the power consumption _and_ performance
in the same time. That means ARM chips will still be ahead for years in power
consumption and performance (or performance/Watt).

From what I've noticed right now an Atom chip is like twice as expensive as a
similar performance ARM chip. So it will be interesting to see if they will
ever overcome that, too. Intel has never really liked making Atom chips
because they make so much less money on them than on their other chips.That's
why they haven't really improved them since 2008 when they launched Atom.

But they need to make SoC's, because ARM chips improve ~2.5x every 12 months,
that's about 4x every 18 months, so twice as fast as x86 chips currently.
That's why Intel is saying they want to start making SoC's and double Moore's
Law. Because ARM is already doing that! But Intel won't have their 22nm 3D
Atom until late 2013 or early 2014. The 32nm one won't be competitive. And I
doubt the 22nm will be, too. It might be competitive in power consumption by
then, but it won't be in performance, since ARM chips will keep the same low
power consumption that they have now, but will increase performance 2.5x every
year by then, while Intel can't do both in the same time.

