Intel Brings Chiplets to Data Center CPUs(eetimes.com) |
Intel Brings Chiplets to Data Center CPUs(eetimes.com) |
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/keep-pace-moores-law-chipmakers-...
[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-epyc-processor-models-...
[3] https://www.wired.com/story/keep-pace-moores-law-chipmakers-...
Given that this is a trade-ish publication, I think writers/editors will more or less assume their audience understands the smackdown that AMD has been laying on Intel and AMD's chiplet strategy.
Even when Intel moves to heterogeneous dies, that won't actually be a first for them, even in the modern era. Several early i3/i5/i7 models had one die with two cores and another die that handled memory and I/O.
But this story is about Intel. Though it depends on how you define "chiplet". In this article it looks like 4 identical chips wired on a package each with their own IO and memory controllers. That's very different from from AMD's core chips wired to an IO chip, and is nothing new for Intel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-chip_module
It's the expected response from Intel when they are unable to compete on throughput per socket with a single chip (they went to DCMs during the period of Opteron dominance too). I don't know what the story is really -- they said the latency was too high to do this before but they've already done something effectively the same (and multi socket SMP systems have even higher chip to chip latency again, so clearly it can be done). I guess they just improved the on package interconnect performance a bit, but almost certainly they would have done a multi chip to compete with AMD even if they were not able to improve that latency.
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/intel-slide-criticizes-amd-for-us...
It’s not something to brag about.
The 4 die SoC does look an awful lot like 1st gen EPYC.
> The 2 × 2 "quad-core" (dual-die dual-core[17]) comprised two separate dual-core die next to each other in one CPU package.
This is to make routing easier on packaging as well as optimize motherboard layout when it comes to memory, power and IO.
If you are just as confused as I am at "fourth generation" when Xeon has been around for decades, they mean "fourth-generation Xeon Scalable Processor (SP)". Skylake-SP, Cascade Lake-SP, Ice Lake-SP were the previous generations. Where Xeon processors previously used E3/E5/E7 designations for 1/2/4+ socket capabilities, SP CPUs use metallic prefixes: Bronze representing basic processors, Silver low power, Gold adding different options for advanced interconnects and integrated accelerators, and Platinum offering the widest range of capabilities.
Actually it's not even that in the case of Intel vs AMD because Intel continues to have large revenues and profits (gross margins slipped from usual low-60s to low-50s in the past few years). Whereas AMD was really struggling as a company for long periods.
Could Intel be in terminal decline as a CPU design and/or silicon manufacturing leader? It's possible. Is it a done deal or are they "finished" any time soon? No way. It will be many years while this plays out.
Intel's first proper competitor to Zen is coming out soon, and from what I've seen so far it looks like a monster. Couple this with them launching GPU's into the most demand-heavy market we might ever see, they don't have to do much to have a good few years.
Also, every measure I've ever seen has AMD still at least a doubling away from parity with Intel, so I find your figure very hard to believe.
AMD is competing with Intel today. They're offerings are better so they're winning market share and growing.
On the other hand, Intel really needs to be compared to the Intel of a few years back. They had ~100% of the server, laptop, and workstation markets. Whatever they released, people would buy it, and they could charge whatever they wanted. That level of dominance isn't going to come back. There is too much competition from AMD and ARM.
I'm not saying that Intel won't do well. But while they have to deliver competitive CPUs, they also have to succeed with this GPU push (which btw is not their first attempt) and probably also succeed with fabbing other people's chips (which has also flopped in the past). So they need to not flop this time, and they have to continue to execute well since these areas all have competition.
As a consumer, this is all excellent. It's seriously amazing what healthy competition brings.
From what I have read their GPUs will be fabbed by TSMC so they will be constrained by capacity as much as anyone else.
Intel still has 90%+ of the server market. It only just started moving over to AMD. They did gain a lot of ground over Intel in the desktop market though.
Intel went the EMIB route to route through embedded silicon but people need to be reminded on HN that chiplet/fabric architecture is not something to brag about as a feature - which is what a lot of comments are doing (AMD did it first!). Intel went through this mess because they had to due to yield. It ain't a feature for the customer.
As I said, "chiplet" just depends on a definition, there is really no good single one. Almost certainly the dies could be used standalone, and it wouldn't be surprising if some were for low end SKUs (modulo the statement in the article that they won't for this generation) -- there are some mesh IOs on some length about 1/2 the die on two edges, that's it. Not much area.
Amazing. RTX 3090 has peak fp32 performance of 35 TFLOPS.
It's just amazing to me that people who really follow the AMD / Intel battle quite closely can actually believe that Intel is finished because AMD emerged from their decade-long post-Opteron slump a few years ago with Zen.
Add to that some reality about purchaser reluctance to switch, in part because of at least perceived quality of platform support, and Intel still has a lot of breathing room.
We're starting to see some positive signs from Intel fabs, so they could likely recover, as they have before. For AMD to become dominant, they will need to continue to do excellent work for a few more years while Intel continues to wallow as they have since maybe Skylake.
> You really think we would end up with anything other than with >50% of datacenter purchases going to amd?
Even if this did happen, how do you believe AMD survived for decades with probably under 1% of data center purchases? And small share of PC and other server revenue? How as AMD able to weather through all that and eventually come out the other side with a good product that would not be possible for Intel?
My comment started with that phrase because that's what it was about, but I guess the wording confused people?