By: juanrga (nospam.delete@this.juanrga.com), August 19, 2014 3:00 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Jouni Osmala (josmala.delete@this.cc.hut.fi) on August 18, 2014 1:36 am wrote:
> I agree on you with ISA effect between ARM and Intel, but for process there is
> no-one like Intel, and that's the strong enough force that makes cows fly.
> They put more money on process development than anyone for decades they probably got the best process engineers
> since everyone in the field knows if you want to be ahead of everyone else go to Intel. There are plenty of
> parameters to tune with different trade offs then you should consider the pipeline between starting to develop
> a manufacturing process to having product at the hands of the customers, that pipeline is quite long and people
> make announcements at different stages of that pipeline and you have clearly mistaken those stages. Intel got
> improved transistors in their 22nm process and now others are aiming in their 14nm process to have same improvement
> in their transistors, but Intel got nice improvement over their 22nm transistors. So in the end, the manufacturing
> process might actually be the thing that keeps x86 ahead of ARM indefinitely.
>
> As for delay of Broadwell what I think has happened is that 22nm has really good yields and
> 14nm yield improvement curve changed temporarily its trajectory to not improving as fast as
> traditionally it has and they had to put on hold the retooling for 14nm process, and then they
> got it back few months later. And that was quite close to point in which they would start converting
> for mass production but just below it. Now if everyone else has same problem, then there is
> bigger delay between some production and high volume complex chip than normally.
>
Yes, Intel has shined in manufacturing and it still has a leading gap over rest of foundries, but my point is that the gap has been reduced in recent times. E.g. Broadwell-EP on 14nm FinFET is scheduled for Q4 2015 and ARM SoCs on 16nm FinFET are scheduled for 2016. Intel will have only a half-node advantage this time.
Purana Archer has given some numbers for both TSMC and Intel. TSMC has lots of money now
http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=142175&curpostid=142899
And TSMC is accelerating plans for 10nm
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/tsmc-to-speed-up-development-of-10nm-process-technology/
> I agree on you with ISA effect between ARM and Intel, but for process there is
> no-one like Intel, and that's the strong enough force that makes cows fly.
> They put more money on process development than anyone for decades they probably got the best process engineers
> since everyone in the field knows if you want to be ahead of everyone else go to Intel. There are plenty of
> parameters to tune with different trade offs then you should consider the pipeline between starting to develop
> a manufacturing process to having product at the hands of the customers, that pipeline is quite long and people
> make announcements at different stages of that pipeline and you have clearly mistaken those stages. Intel got
> improved transistors in their 22nm process and now others are aiming in their 14nm process to have same improvement
> in their transistors, but Intel got nice improvement over their 22nm transistors. So in the end, the manufacturing
> process might actually be the thing that keeps x86 ahead of ARM indefinitely.
>
> As for delay of Broadwell what I think has happened is that 22nm has really good yields and
> 14nm yield improvement curve changed temporarily its trajectory to not improving as fast as
> traditionally it has and they had to put on hold the retooling for 14nm process, and then they
> got it back few months later. And that was quite close to point in which they would start converting
> for mass production but just below it. Now if everyone else has same problem, then there is
> bigger delay between some production and high volume complex chip than normally.
>
Yes, Intel has shined in manufacturing and it still has a leading gap over rest of foundries, but my point is that the gap has been reduced in recent times. E.g. Broadwell-EP on 14nm FinFET is scheduled for Q4 2015 and ARM SoCs on 16nm FinFET are scheduled for 2016. Intel will have only a half-node advantage this time.
Purana Archer has given some numbers for both TSMC and Intel. TSMC has lots of money now
http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=142175&curpostid=142899
And TSMC is accelerating plans for 10nm
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/tsmc-to-speed-up-development-of-10nm-process-technology/
