Wednesday, March 7th 2018
Globalfoundries: 7 nm to Enable up to 2.7x Smaller Dies, 5 GHz CPUs
Globalfoundries' Chief Technical Officer, Gary Patton, talked about the future he believes can be possible in future manufacturing processes, calling for particular attention towards the next step in the ladder at 7 nm. Apparently, the 7 nm process at Globalfoundries has received a shot in the arm from the integration of ex IBM engineering specialists (remember that IBM practically paid Globalfoundries to take its manufacturing division of its hands), and the company now expects better than foreseen technical specs and achievements of its 7 nm process.
While a move from 14 nm to 7 nm was expected to provide, at the very best, a halving in the actual size of a chip manufactured in 7 nm compared to 14 nm, Gary Patton is now saying that the are should actually be reduced by up to 2.7 times the original size. To put that into perspective, AMD's 1000 series processors on the Zeppelin die and 14 nm process, which come in at 213 mm² for the full, 8-core design, could be brought down to just 80 mm² instead. AMD could potentially use up that extra die space to either build in some overprovisioning, should the process still be in its infancy and yields need a small boost; or cram it with double the amount of cores and other architectural improvements, and still have chips that are smaller than the original Zen dies.
According to Patton, these die space saving improvements aren't the only thing that has gone on better than they expected on the 7 nm manufacturing process. Patton said that he expects this design to be able to scale pretty well to some 5 GHz operating frequencies. Now, this is the least interesting part of the 7 nm equation, even though it might not seem like it. The ability to scale up to 5 GHz frequencies will of course depend on the architecture's design being able to achieve that operating frequency stably, most of all. And of course, we've already had an historical example of an architecture that aims to go as high as possible in the frequency department with Intel's NetBurst - and we all remember how that went.
It remains to be seen what these 7 nm expectations will mean for AMD, of course. But recent events have made it abundantly clear that the company is now in the more solid competition footing it ever has been with Intel when it comes to manufacturing processes. It seems that AMD's decision to spin off its manufacturing division was a heavy, but ultimately smart decision; let's see where this road will take us.
Sources:
AnandTech, via PC Games Hardware.de
While a move from 14 nm to 7 nm was expected to provide, at the very best, a halving in the actual size of a chip manufactured in 7 nm compared to 14 nm, Gary Patton is now saying that the are should actually be reduced by up to 2.7 times the original size. To put that into perspective, AMD's 1000 series processors on the Zeppelin die and 14 nm process, which come in at 213 mm² for the full, 8-core design, could be brought down to just 80 mm² instead. AMD could potentially use up that extra die space to either build in some overprovisioning, should the process still be in its infancy and yields need a small boost; or cram it with double the amount of cores and other architectural improvements, and still have chips that are smaller than the original Zen dies.
22 Comments on Globalfoundries: 7 nm to Enable up to 2.7x Smaller Dies, 5 GHz CPUs
This is Gf Pr what's team blues practices got to do with this , thats a confused statement you prefer crap tim ??
So your saying stick your improvements Gf then or am i miss reading your sentiment.
Seams odd i dunno.
Until then i just have to hope the bedst and maybe finally i can use this avatar for good :peace:
Whats with the trolls today ,tut.
Step 2: Wait a year and deal with a year of not-so-great 1080p gaming performance.
Step 3: Buy a 3000-series Ryzen chip when it comes out.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!!!
That said only time will truly tell which direction AMD actually takes.
You said some dumb shit im sorry for pulling on it though ok.
You think Anyone else thinks node shrinks are just That easy , you see they're doing it ,im sure as shit they know it's not that easy and have plans.
The problem with smaller transistors is actually the electrical charge. Leakage current that could have been acceptable at 16nm may very well you're loosing half the electrical charge you have left at 7nm.
Show me the monitor that can dish that out.
2) Lower tier 2600x could fare much better vs comparably priced i5
I still really think that AMD should consider integrating a special tailored and kind of task specific single core CPU onto it's GPU's and/or chipsets as well. There is a lot of space on the backside of a GPU that could probably be utilized for such things. They could do the same with the chipset as well to help handle storage, network, ect related things. Why cram everything on same chip while adding heat to it as a byproduct on something that is shrinking and becoming more challenging to cool effectively at the same TDP levels? At some point or another chip makers are going to have to move more towards multi chip/socket solutions to these issues as we run into more challenging die node shrink limitations.
I hate to say it because I wish AMD luck in the future as they are a great company, but I strongly feel that Intel's FPGA is a enormous sleeping giant. FPGA's in general have so much potential to me as they can be configured appropriately to specific needs. I'm not sure why we don't have a CPU FPGA swamped with like 8 FPGA's around it that interconnect with it. You'd have tons of surface area for cooling and enormous amounts of reconfigurable power at hand especially if you had that with something like very potent APU at it's center with lots of AI machine learning capability to adapt to a users usage and needs.