Thursday, April 18th 2019
Intel Courting Samsung to Manufacture Xe GPUs?
Intel's Xe discrete GPU project head Raja Koduri recently visited a Samsung Electronics silicon fabrication facility in Korea at the backdrop of the company's major 5 nm EUV announcement. This sparks speculation that Koduri could be exploring Samsung's portfolio of sub-10 nm contract-manufacturing offerings to mass-produce Xe discrete GPUs. Intel's own foundry business is reeling with mounting pressure from the company's main breadwinner, the client and enterprise processor businesses, to get its 10 nm node on the road. Koduri's GPU would need to leverage higher transistor densities than what Intel's 10 nm could offer, given that rival AMD is already implementing 7 nm, and NVIDIA is expected to go sub-10 nm with its future generation of GPUs.
Sources:
Raja Koduri (Twitter), Wuthering_HHH (Reddit)
29 Comments on Intel Courting Samsung to Manufacture Xe GPUs?
That is what Zen2 would be on if Glofo hadn't dropped the ball, TSMC all the way now.
And Intel claims a lot of things, would you believe them if they said Santa was real too?
Also, their 10nm is still not suitable for mass production afaik, unless you're sitting on some inside information. If it was, we'd see it used for many of their CPUs, which we don't at the moment. In fact, the last I read, was that Intel started over from scratch at 10nm, as their current tech is seriously broken.
What happened with 10nm's plan is the intention to make it X2.7 denser, a mission that failed. The newer, less dense (AFAIK X2.4 density) 10nm process has been in use for about half a year now or close to this. Is it mass-available? no, not yet. Not Intel-mass.
Some Keller dude from Intel told me they have some plans to make extensive use out of it (10nm fabs, there will be 3 eventually), so i assume we haven't heard the last of it. Pinky promise, no crazy inside information.
We all live believing in whatever we want. And one day Intel will simply make a conference and announce 10nm CPUs out of thin air.
Who have foreseen 9900K? Or MCM Xeons? Did you?
On the other hand, when Ryzen came out in 2017, the only thing we didn't know was the official naming.
I have leaked plenty of Intel roadmaps and unannounced products in the past, since I was a tech journalist for well over a decade.
So yes, people do know about upcoming things. The sad fact is that there aren't many tech journalists left and the bloggers don't care about this stuff so...
The Ryzen hype was actually so weird that it's hard to imagine it wasn't organized by AMD.
I mean: we've seen some "leaked slides" that were so complicated and polished that's they couldn't have come from an internal meeting. And they still lacked actual names or precise figures - again, something you wouldn't hide from senior management. :-)
Intel doesn't "leak" much. So yeah... you can believe they have nothing to leak. And it could be true. But they've surprised us before. Why would they? I mean: where's the money in that?
They have to address 2 markets: mobile APUs and datacenters.
Mobile APUs - because Intel has to protect their share in general use and low-end gaming laptops.
Datacenters - because they're trying to build an ecosystem capable of creating all-Intel servers (maybe they want to enter this business - a bit like IBM).
Workstation and gaming cards are somewhere in the middle and can be easily extrapolated from the above. AMD has been doing that for years.
Dude, I've had an entire year worth of detailed roadmaps from Intel. These things leak, so not, it was most likely not orchestrated by AMD, but feel free to believe whatever you want.
Intel leaks plenty, but most of the leaks are from third parties, i.e. board makers and the distribution channel.
But hey, no point arguing with you, you seem to know best...
All the development for the new and better stuff is not free. It cannot be sustained by close to zero profits.
But yeah, I don't care about early information. It has no value for me (why would it?).
So I've admitted something. What about you?
You don't give a rats ass about confidentiality agreements? Or maybe you think it's journalists' "mission" to publish this stuff?
I just don't understand why you're so proud of yourself. Like a 10 year old bragging because he stole a chocolate bar...
Of course it has value, it prevents people buying "old" hardware when something new is coming out soon.
Not bragging, it's historical fact. Not sure what I've done to hurt your feelings so badly, but tbh, I don't really care.
Intel: Hey, Micron can you provide Vram for our upcoming GPU
Micron: Sure just pay the higher price
Intel: Eh, Samsung how much for Vram