Saturday, July 6th 2024
Intel Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" Discrete GPUs Made on TSMC 4 nm Process
Intel has reportedly chosen the TSMC 4 nm EUV foundry node for its next generation Arc Xe2 discrete GPUs based on the "Battlemage" graphics architecture. This would mark a generational upgrade from the Arc "Alchemist" family, which Intel built on the TSMC 6 nm DUV process. The TSMC N4 node offers significant increases in transistor densities, performance, and power efficiency over the N6, which is allowing Intel to nearly double the Xe cores on its largest "Battlemage" variant in numerical terms. This, coupled with increased IPC, clock speeds, and other features, should make the "Battlemage" contemporary against today's AMD RDNA 3 and NVIDIA Ada gaming GPUs. Interestingly, TSMC N4 isn't the most advanced foundry node that the Xe2 "Battlemage" is being built on. The iGPU powering Intel's Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" processor is part of its Compute tile, which Intel is building on the more advanced TSMC N3 (3 nm) node.
Source:
DigiTimes
59 Comments on Intel Arc Xe2 "Battlemage" Discrete GPUs Made on TSMC 4 nm Process
That being said consoles is an important market not just for income, but also for promoting techs. Games developed on consoles will support the hardware of those consoles and considering the modern consoles are PCs, that means that PC ports will be coming with all Intel techs integrated from day 1, if those consoles are running Intel hardware.
Microsoft is with Qualcomm now because it wants to secure that IF ARM prevails Windows will remain the OS of choice. But it is with Intel for over 25 years. The Surface line using Intel chips and not AMD is a proof of that. MS waiting for Intel Lunar Lake to come out before offering AI features to x86 CPUs is also one more. Don't think that MS is delaying AI features on AMD's new CPUs just for Qualcomm's sake. In the x86 market MS was always supporting Intel first, AMD (much) later. And IF ARM doesn't prevail, MS will remain in bed with Intel. IF ARM grabs enough market share but x86 remains a 50%+ option, MS will have a trio with Qualcomm and Intel in bed. No one writes off Intel.
As such mas sales drive down costs and can warrant agressive pricing as i just picked up amd plans to do with its midrange cpu,
if this becomes true we look at midrange cards that finally will hold some value over time as such its graphical performance must hover around 4080
with the tdp of a 4060ti at worst.
Price willing to pay 479 Euros or 500 with game bundles, better steam account balance
And that's how protectionism works in the long term, no economy benefits from it, it might create or keep 1000 jobs but loses 100 000 ones in the long term.
AMD and ARM from TSMC gives you back and extremely cheap and fast CPUs, immediate cost cutting, enabling the economy's informatisation and higher productivity. If the economy grows 3% instead of 2% thanks to those cpus, it doubles in 24 years instead of 35 years and 3% growth for 35 years will mean the economy is now at 281% of its original size instead of 200%.
That's the effect of competition and trade. If you choose to support Intel and moving fabs to the US, you might create 50k job in the long term, which means literally nothing compared to the size of the US economy, it will cost you years to build them, billions to fund them but in the longterm, but it doesn't change the fact that the cost of producing in the US will be higher, it will be small potion of global market and those resources were wasted and now, you are obliged also to purchase US made products which are more expensive and and in the end, you are left with less money to spend on something else and the US economy is smaller as a whole and a million of jobs are missing due to a simple decision made 20 years ago.
Intel - you would still have had 4 cores
AMD - now you can afford 12 for the same price and they are also significantly faster.
That's competition and free trade for you.
As for the 4nm GPUs - too little, too late, and probably will not be really competitive.
TSMC has already got 3nm production up and running for years, and they are now in the process to move everything to 2nm.
So, where exactly does that old 4nm process fall?
You can also work home office, and still have very decent amounts of incomes. /endofofftopic
Not sure why is even N3 is mentioned... you had to have everything made from scratch again to port it to it to that process. Intel is not a home tenant at TSMC and will not have access to all software and design help as Apple does or nvidia, as they have their own tailored tech-nodes named after them.
Get real people, stop bitching about useless crap but look at the technological bits there.
Intel is still doing it to this day, they bribe OEMs....sorry, not bribery, but or "joint development funds" (although I dont know how it isnt bribery when youre basically paying a company to NOT use your competitor)to keep AMD chips out of the majority of laptop models....that's not competition or innovation, that's cartelism and monopoly and it comes at the consumers expense. For the past several years AMD has had superior products, but Intel has been able to stave that off through basically bribery and selling chips at cost which creates a situation where the superior product DOESNT succeed. How can anybody cheer for that or that behavior?
The bottom line is this: in a defacto duopoly, the best situation for consumers is a 50%/50% split in marketshare to promote thr most competition and the lowest prices..that is OBJECTIVELY true. Therefore, since Intel has the majority of marketshare in all segments of x86, it is also OBJECTIVELY true that any increase in that marketshare is BAD for consumers....so I ask again, why cheer for Intel? All these reasons are exactly why I do not understand why people are excited for Intel to make dGPUs...all Intel will do is take marketshare from AMD because it's been proven that Nvidia fans will never buy anything other than Nvidia, and we'll be in the exact same spot we were in befofe....only this time, Intel can use their dGPUs to turn the screws on OEMs even more: "Bundle your prebuilts with our CPU and dGPU and we'll give the dGPU at cost....just as long as you ensure that AMD CPUs are only used in a single, budget model with the lowest sales figures". Yes, Intel will use any success in dGPU to put even more pressure on AMD in x86....not with innovation or along the superior product, but through corporation and cartelism.
P.S. The fact that x86 is a duopoly and the American government gave billions to only one side of that duopoly is crazy, it destroys any sense of a free and fair market, and no, I'm not saying they should have given money to AMD too, no corporation with billions of dollars should get taxpayer money. What tje government should have done is say to Intel: "If you don't build some fabs here, we're going to start a monopoly investigation against you...."
P.S.S. I'm not an "AMD fan", I'm a fan of what is objectively best for me, the consumer, and it is NEVER in the consumer's interest for a monopolistic company to extend that monopoly. If the day ever came where AMD captured 51% of the market, I'd be cheering for Intel to take that 1% back.
I also doubt nvidia will do more than a mostly paper launch of a 5090 if that is going to be on n3?
The one in Ireland is only building Intel-4 and Intel 3. Everything else (EUV) is coming out of D1X.
Intel says mfg plans/allocations are made early in the product cycle, so I'm guessing the decision to use Intel-3 for Sierra Forest and TSM-N3 for Lunar Lake was made a few years back, and had more to do with the limited capacity in D1X than any other reason.
IFS has been hemorrhaging money. All is not well in the house of Intel.