Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

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> When first formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore 50 years ago, this suggested that chip power could double every 12 months.

What? I don't think it was ever 12 months, but 18-24 months.

> Now, improvements are expected approximately every 24 months.

No, they said it will take 2.5 years now instead of two.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3329035-intels-intc-ceo-bria...

I wouldn't expect the 10nm chips at least until mid-2017, which should put Intel neck in neck with TSMC and Samsung's 10nm processes, which at most might be launched a few months later.

It also looks like IBM and its partners (Samsung/Global Foundries) will actually beat Intel to 7nm (probably early/mid 2019 for Samsung/GF - late 2019/early 2020 for Intel).

While IBM is talking about EUV lithography, Intel still seems to be complaining about multi-pattern lithography, so it seems pretty clear that Intel is behind IBM for 7nm. They also haven't said anything yet about what materials they'll use for 7nm transistors, just that they will require something different than Silicon.

The best part about this is that now Intel can't hide the x86 baggage in mobile behind its one generation ahead process node, which made Atom more or less competitive (at least in performance and power consumption, but not in price).

With ARM chips on very similar process nodes and arriving at the same time on the market, there should be no contest for the ARM chips in mobile.

Not clear what IBM doing 7nm means, really. They no longer own a foundry, and don't have any chips in normal products that compete with Intel. IBM also demonstrated some really high clock speeds previously, but the Power8 is still a 4GHz part and is built on 22nm.

Now, if Global Foundry actually starts making full 14nm chips this year (which it doesn't sound like it, seems to be a 20nm back end), that might things pretty interesting.

I previously worked for a company that used both TSMC and UMC, the jump to the next process level is always extremely hard, and the biggest deal is yield. Until the yields are high enough to actually get to a profit a lot of companies with specialized chips will stick to the older process (set-top box chips for instance) where it's good enough.

FD: I'm at Intel (not hardware), cannot comment on Intel itself.

Why does IBM need to own a foundry to design chips? Making chips is a commodity business. The skill is in the design and patenting.

> Making chips is a commodity business. The skill is in the design and patenting

There's no point in designing (& patenting) a fancy chip that can't be manufactured in yields high enough to get a profit, is there? An approximate analogy would be wireframing a web application prototype (design) vs. egnineering the site so that it scales to millions of users (making chips).

More on-topic, IBM probably announced a 7 chip that can't be manafactured with acceptable yields yet. Hypothetically, Intel could design a 5nm chip with < 0.1% yields: but what would be point?

Of course there is. Even if the chip is never released to the public, the IP and processes used to produce a 7nm chip have great patent value.

Without owning the foundry, it's not clear if this is an IBM tech demo that goes nowhere, or if it effects GF's roadmap. GF uses a Samsung process for 14nm (really 14/20 hybrid), so it really looks like IBM is out of the foundry business as far as taking a process all the way to manufacturing.

GF might leapfrog down to 7nm, but if they aren't even fully 14nm at this point, does that really seem plausible?

Gordon Moore first proposed 12 months in his article, then dropped back to 24 months a few years later. That number has held since the 80's, until now.

Also it’s not ‘chip power’ but ‘number of transistors’. Common misunderstanding.

Yeah, even without the step to 10nm, the third generation 14nm chips will probably be a bit faster than the second generation. Density can't be improved but there is surely efficiency to be realized.

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