Wednesday, March 31st 2021
Intel Could Rename its Semiconductor Nodes to Catch Up with the Industry
In the past few years, Intel has struggled a lot with its semiconductor manufacturing. Starting from the 10 nm fiasco, the company delayed the new node for years and years, making it seem like it is never going to get delivered. The node was believed to be so advanced that it was unexpectedly hard to manufacture, giving the company more problems. Low yields have been present for a long time, and it is only recently that Intel has started shipping its 10 nm products. However, its competitor, TSMC, has been pumping out nodes at an amazing rate. At the time of writing, the Taiwanese giant is producing the 5 nm node, with a 4 nm node on the way.
So to remain competitive, Intel would need to apply a new tactic. The company has a 7 nm node in the works for 2023 when TSMC will switch to the 3 nm+ nodes. That represents a marketing problem, where the node naming convention is making Intel inferior to its competitors. To fix that, the company will likely start node renaming and give its nodes new names, that are corresponding to the industry naming conventions. We still have no information how will the new names look like, or if Intel will do it in the first place, so take this with a grain of salt.
Source:
Oregon Live
So to remain competitive, Intel would need to apply a new tactic. The company has a 7 nm node in the works for 2023 when TSMC will switch to the 3 nm+ nodes. That represents a marketing problem, where the node naming convention is making Intel inferior to its competitors. To fix that, the company will likely start node renaming and give its nodes new names, that are corresponding to the industry naming conventions. We still have no information how will the new names look like, or if Intel will do it in the first place, so take this with a grain of salt.
60 Comments on Intel Could Rename its Semiconductor Nodes to Catch Up with the Industry
10nm superfin5nm SuperX2 Velocity Ultrafin
I hope Intel comes out strong and comes dedicated this time.
The Lasertec hesitation is next to the Apple offer they turned down.
GloFo 12nm was/is far worse than Intel 14nm for example.
Samsung 8nm is not great, but decent - Its probably worse than Intel 10nm
Intels 10nm, is more like TSMC 7nm.
I expect Intel 7nm will be more like TSMC 5nm or even 4nm.
If just performance and watt-usage is good, they can call it whatever they want, could not care less
The next few years are going to be interesting. Can't wait for next gen CPU platforms in 2022+ with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, not going to get anything before DDR5 has matured (high clocks with decent timings - not going from top-end DDR4 to mediocre DDR5 on launch, thats for sure).
Samsung 8nm is 10nm-class process, half-node between 12/14nm and 7nm.
Intel 10nm is roughly equal to TSMC/Samsung 7nm.
From what is known Intel's 7nm should be about on par with TSMC/Samsung 5nm.
TSMC N4 is an updated N5(P) and not a new full node (in line with plus jokes about Intel processes, this one could be named 5++).
Since process is measured by the smallest feature, they are probably transitioning from fin-measuring contest to measuring only the tip of the fin :pimp:
"Tech node doesn't matter, it's how you use it"
I know there was a lot of marketing material that compared it to TSMC's 7nm, but that was before Intel actually managed to ship a product on that process, and in between the confessed they had to lower the specs and density to make it work even for 4 core low power laptop processors.
And no, Ryzen 1600 does not sell like hotcakes at all. I know, since I work in the retail b2b market EU. Ryzen 1000 series is pretty much NOT SELLING at all at this point. 2000 series still does to a small degree, but it's mostly 3000 and 5000 series at this point + 400/500 chipset boards
Intel 10400 is easily beating Ryzen 1600 and 2600 for the same price in pretty much everything, especially in gaming and when paired with a board that allows boost clocks to go high like Asrock's BFB feature.
Zen3: 4.15 billion transistors on 80.6 mm² - 51.4 MTr/mm²
Renoir: 9.8 billion transistors on 156 mm² - 62.8 MTr/mm²
Intel transistors counts are really hard to come by. There was a throwaway comment in some financial call right after Ice Lake release saying it has over 7B transistors.
Ice Lake die that was the only one out at that point is 122.5 mm² which puts density at about 57 MTr/mm².
Same ballpark. Amount of different elements in the die (cache, GPU etc) probably play a bigger role in density of a specific chip at this point than manufacturing process.
Very disappointing to hear Intel doing this, I thought they had higher technical standards. But now their technical standards will be as nasty as their marketing ones!
Come to think of it, nothing to lose for them, they could act as middle man for TSMC, Samsung or GloFo :p
Just because you don't buy it doesn't mean that the rest of the world doesn't.
That is why an ever growing number of industry specialists is urging to drop the nm numbers as a naming and create something that is more informative about density, height and such.
No amount of marketing will change that.Yeah what I've seen so far also puts Intel at around 50-60. Perhaps that's one reason for Big.little, a bit more leeway to play with densities on different core designs to keep 10nm within spec.
My old 2600K ran 5 GHz and easily beat Ryzen 1600 @ 4 GHz in 99.9% og games and applications
I'd never buy or recommend Ryzen 1000 series from NEW, probably not 2000 series either, unless it's cheap as dirt on sale, it's 3000 or 5000 seriesOnce again, I work with b2b sales and we have tons of huge retailers onboard, Ryzen 1000 is NOT selling like hotcakes, far from it.
What sells like hotcakes, especially in the laptop segment, is Intel, Intel and more Intel. Why? AMD can't deliver. Intel easily can, because they make their chips themself.
I think we ship 1 AMD laptop for every 100 Intel laptop, or so.Irellevant, when someone with a Glofo 12nm calls Intel 14nm inferior? Yeah :laugh: :laugh: Suuuuuure.
TSMC is literally the reason why 3000 and especially 5000 performs great. If AMD were stuck with Glofo still, it would be a whole different story, with subpar clockspeeds like all 1000 and 2000 series chips.