computer components & hardware - 65nm news from Intel

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65nm news from Intel

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
.cable.rogers.com...
http://www.reuters.com/locales/c_new...toryID=6098883

Yousuf Khan

I don't know, maybe it's just me but it seems like this article puts way to
much importance on the manufacturing process a CPU is made on.. Not that
these things aren't important at all... But the fact that my Athlon64 3000+
is still made on a .13 process really didn't discourage me at all.. My
system still performs extremely well despite being a "generation behind"
Intel's Prescott.

Carlo

It looks like AMD is progressing nicely with .09
This website shows the Athlon 64 4000+ and 3800+ as
well as the FX-55 as scheduled for release in October.

http://www.c627627.com/AMD/Athlon64/

Mobile Athlon 64 chips for thin and light notebooks are
being made now on .09

Carlo Razzeto wrote:

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
.cable.rogers.com...
http://www.reuters.com/locales/c_new...toryID=6098883

Yousuf Khan

I don't know, maybe it's just me but it seems like this article puts way to
much importance on the manufacturing process a CPU is made on.. Not that
these things aren't important at all... But the fact that my Athlon64 3000+
is still made on a .13 process really didn't discourage me at all.. My
system still performs extremely well despite being a "generation behind"
Intel's Prescott.

Carlo

Carlo Razzeto wrote:
I don't know, maybe it's just me but it seems like this article puts
way to much importance on the manufacturing process a CPU is made
on.. Not that these things aren't important at all... But the fact
that my Athlon64 3000+ is still made on a .13 process really didn't
discourage me at all.. My system still performs extremely well
despite being a "generation behind" Intel's Prescott.

Shhh! Intel needs a little bit of a pick-me-up. Let it enjoy its usual
fawning coverage, like from yesteryear. :-)

Yousuf Khan

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:54:23 -0400, "Carlo Razzeto"
wrote:

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
t.cable.rogers.com...
http://www.reuters.com/locales/c_new...toryID=6098883

I don't know, maybe it's just me but it seems like this article puts way to
much importance on the manufacturing process a CPU is made on.. Not that
these things aren't important at all... But the fact that my Athlon64 3000+
is still made on a .13 process really didn't discourage me at all.. My
system still performs extremely well despite being a "generation behind"
Intel's Prescott.

The important difference is that Athlon64 3000+ costs AMD more to
build than Intel's Prescott 3.0GHz chips, yet sells for less. New
process generation is equally one part technology, one part financial
these days (case-in-point, Intel is very aggressively moving the
low-end Celeron to the newest manufacturing product rather than just
focusing on high-end chips first).

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

JK wrote:

It looks like AMD is progressing nicely with .09
This website shows the Athlon 64 4000+ and 3800+

The 3800+ on .09 that is. The 3800+ on .13 was released earlier.

as
well as the FX-55 as scheduled for release in October.

http://www.c627627.com/AMD/Athlon64/

Mobile Athlon 64 chips for thin and light notebooks are
being made now on .09

Carlo Razzeto wrote:

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
.cable.rogers.com...
http://www.reuters.com/locales/c_new...toryID=6098883

Yousuf Khan

I don't know, maybe it's just me but it seems like this article puts way to
much importance on the manufacturing process a CPU is made on.. Not that
these things aren't important at all... But the fact that my Athlon64 3000+
is still made on a .13 process really didn't discourage me at all.. My
system still performs extremely well despite being a "generation behind"
Intel's Prescott.

Carlo

"Tony Hill" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:54:23 -0400, "Carlo Razzeto"
wrote:

The important difference is that Athlon64 3000+ costs AMD more to
build than Intel's Prescott 3.0GHz chips, yet sells for less. New
process generation is equally one part technology, one part financial
these days (case-in-point, Intel is very aggressively moving the
low-end Celeron to the newest manufacturing product rather than just
focusing on high-end chips first).

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

This I realize and I'm not trying to take that away... I'm just saying that
if I didn't know any better and I were to read the article I might tend to
automatically assume that a .13 chip is worse than a .09 chip etc.... When
the truth is the manufacturing process is not really going to have a huge
impact in performance (unless of course it means they can get more MHz out
of it).

Carlo

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 23:55:47 -0400, "Carlo Razzeto"
wrote:

"Tony Hill" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:54:23 -0400, "Carlo Razzeto"
wrote:

The important difference is that Athlon64 3000+ costs AMD more to
build than Intel's Prescott 3.0GHz chips, yet sells for less. New
process generation is equally one part technology, one part financial
these days (case-in-point, Intel is very aggressively moving the
low-end Celeron to the newest manufacturing product rather than just
focusing on high-end chips first).

This I realize and I'm not trying to take that away... I'm just saying that
if I didn't know any better and I were to read the article I might tend to
automatically assume that a .13 chip is worse than a .09 chip etc.... When
the truth is the manufacturing process is not really going to have a huge
impact in performance (unless of course it means they can get more MHz out
of it).

Well, until very recently a new manufacturing processes DID mean that
they could get more MHz out of it, usually quite a bit more MHz. On
the old 180nm process the P4 struggled to reach 2.0GHz, while on the
130nm process Intel has managed to push the chip up to 3.4GHz.
Previously the gains were even larger, with the 250nm PIII topping out
at 600MHz and the 180nm eventually managing 1.13GHz.

However the new 90nm fab process has maybe thrown this automatic
assumption of much higher clock speeds into question, at least for the
time being. Intel's still having trouble getting the "Prescott" P4 up
to 3.6GHz and have pushed back the release date of their 3.8 and
4.0GHz P4 chips multiple times. This might just be a specific
situation, as the Prescott is a VERY different chip from the
Northwood, beyond simply the process shrink, however IBM doesn't seem
to be too much better with their PowerPC chips. The PPC 970 (130nm)
made it to 2.0GHz and might have had some headroom left, while
currently IBM is struggling to get decent production on the 2.5GHz PPC
970FX (90nm).

So... err.. what was the point I was trying to get at here again?!
Ohh yeah, I think I'm basically agreeing with you :

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

This is just extra publicity for what has already been
known for months, ie the drive to 65nm is on a fast
pace, things are looking good, much more straining of
silicon, better internal power management, etc. The really
exciting transistor designs will happen at 45nm, using the high-k
interconnects. Though that's still three years away. And there
is interesting research going on at 15nm, for the next decade.

What's not known is exactly how Intel is going to design
the silicon. How are the multiple cores going to work, especially
with the one bus? Even more significantly, how are applications going
to benefit from the 2+ cores; are they going to have to explicitly
code multiple-threading to benefit, which afterall ain't easy to pull off,
or will the feeding of the multiple cores be handled effectively by the
compilers,
or may be even the OS? I see that Intel has released a thread checking
tool, hopefully MS incorporates something like it in their next Studio.

So far, looks like the new upcoming multi-core chip designs will depend heavily
on how applications are developed, more so than ever before. We
already saw some of this with the branch-predictors, the results
weren't impressive at all. If the thread related logic issues can't somehow be
handled at the tool, OS, compiler, or chip level, then it's going to be a long
day reaping the full potential of 2+ cores. 2+ cores may end up like the
386, full of potential but not enough software support.

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
.cable.rogers.com...

http://www.reuters.com/locales/c_new...toryID=6098883

Yousuf Khan