Samsung Scores PC CPU Manufacturing Order from Intel

[kings]

Careful, your inner fanboy shows itself. Did you seriously expect that I would care more about defending some product that I own ? Sorry I don't work like that, no fanboy here, try again.

My 1700X as other first generation Zen products hit a frequency limit and a power wall at around 4 Ghz while other products from Intel manged to reach much higher clocks while maintaining much better power efficiency. That's a clear indication that the node was unfit for high performance processors. That's literally the whole point, Samsung isn't a provider of high performance nodes, first gen Zen is proof of that.

My 1700X also came out in 2017 and was up against a stagnant lineup of underwhelming products from Intel so it did well enough. Things have changed however, Intel has pushed their current node so far they are facing performance regressions with 10nm and AMD isn't stagnating, they deliver product after product, innovation after innovation.

The clock is ticking and Intel can't get away with a sub-par node like AMD did back then.

You really should stop calling other fanboys, just because they don't agree with you 100% on something. I'm such a fanboy, I have a Ryzen and a Polaris card in my living room HTPC.

I just mentioned your 1700X, not for you to defend it, but to show you that because it is a low power process, it doesn't mean the product is bad or has poor performance.

By the way, if this is true, we don't even know what kind of CPU Samsung would produce, it could very well be laptop CPUs where efficiency prevailed over clocks. That's why I did not agree with your comment that only TSMC is worth it.

 

[Vayra86]

Your Ryzen 1700X is manufactured in a low power process (Low Power Plus the technical term), which Samsung has licensed to GlobalFoundries.

Does that mean the CPU is bad?

Its main problem was that it could not clock high and was clearly optimized around.... a low power target for a top of the stack (X) CPU.

Bad product no. Easily surpassed, yes.

 

[TheGuruStud]

No need. Zen 2 mobile is coming and it won't have sub 2ghz clocks

 

[R-T-B]

Good luck in using nodes optimized for low power SoCs. They either get TSMC on board or it's futile.

Samsung does not just have low power nodes...

 

[Vya Domus]

Samsung does not just have low power nodes...

And those would be ?

 

[notb]

And those would be ?

That would be the one they specifically set up for Intel. A large contract gives them the guarantee needed for such investment.
It's the same story we had with Nvidia. "Oh no, Samsung never made large chips. It won't work"

Seriously, it's not magic. They use the same ASML equipment that TSMC has.