darkswordsman17
Lifer
- Mar 11, 2004
- 23,075
- 5,557
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I am puzzled by the fact you think Lakefield being on 10nm is strange, when they'll get regular Icelake chips on 10nm. Lakefield also sounds like a product coming later, so it'll have had longer time for the process to mature.
This is unlike shipping 100 million modems to Apple, because they need to guarantee that number has to work.
Also, Digitimes isn't always reliable.
Again, you are saying assumptions as they are facts.
HoloLens doesn't have enough of a market to make a custom chip for it. You are talking tens of thousands at best. If a company did ask, it makes much more sense its bigger ones like HP. They even made a custom package chip with on-package XMM 7560 WiFi to use it in the Spectre Folio.
Also it starts making sense to make such hybrid chips. If done well it can offer an optimal configuration between high single thread and multi-thread with low TDP.
Why does it need a large market? This chip actually seems perfect for a lower market due to the complexities of production at this time. It seems like someone asked Intel if they could make a chip like this and Intel did it as almost an R&D project, and found out they could. Seems like a pretty limited product capacity would have been an ideal scenario for it. And considering the high cost of the HoloLens, it'd likely be able to absorb a high per unit cost (compared to much cheaper tablets and phones) since I doubt this is cheap. Finding out they can make it and so are going to offer this to others if they want it (which means economies of scale can improve and this chip could be used for other markets/devices). Plus you're basing that on the current HoloLens. If they're able to make it cheaper, adoption will improve significantly.
Oh and there's this:
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/m...act-to-outfit-soldiers-with-hololens-ar-tech/
Seems that rumors are saying the next HoloLens will use Snapdragon 850 though, but considering that Microsoft said there's been interest in it but people were turned off by the older hardware (the old Atom chip they were using), I feel like this chip would be a lot more interesting for developers (easier to port Windows apps, this will present a huge improvement in performance, and should offer low enough power on standby and has cellular capability). Plus it would make for direct continuation of what has already been developed for HoloLens.
How would a 64EU Intel GPU compare to modern ARM based SoC GPUs? (Non-Apple ones, like say the 850.) Maybe I'm wrong, but that seems like a pretty strong GPU, and it makes me think its for a product where visuals will be of extra emphasis. Suppose it could be for some other AR/VR headset.
Considering the other company Intel put so much work into making a similar product for...could this have been for Apple? As a way to try and get them to hold off on moving to their own stuff. Something for the Macbook non-Pro? And could be similar to the AMD GPU chip, where it was made for Apple, but maybe didn't end up using it so they're letting other OEMs use it if they want.