CPU Architect from Intel does an AMA on Reddit. Few interesting excerpts.

[Arachnotronic]

I look forward to the day when an Intel IGP is really good enough for most games. A Broadwell notebook should be quite compelling.

Obviously for high end gaming, discrete's not going away. But at the low end, the bar will move much higher, enabling much better games.

This is an unequivocal win.

 

[Fx1]

They sure have alot of lower end dont they? Or is their capacity just so tiny?

The S3 Mini doesnt use Samsung. None of the flagship Galaxy S3 for the japanese and north american market neither for that matter.

There is a good reason for why they use Qualcomm.

LTE chipsets.

Its more complicated than you think.

Samsung makes 500m phones and they Fab for Apple. They will fill the gaps with their own partners. Qualcomm is a baseband partner so its a good place to go for surplus SOCs

 

[ShintaiDK]

There is a good reason for why they use Qualcomm.

LTE chipsets.

Its more complicated than you think.

Samsung makes 500m phones and they Fab for Apple. They will fill the gaps with their own partners. Qualcomm is a baseband partner so its a good place to go for surplus SOCs

So are you saying that you cant get LTE supporting Galaxy S3 phones with a Samsung CPU?

And Samsung doesnt make 500 million phones, yet alone smartphones. The 500-510 million is what they hope to sell in 2013. Plus Apple is moving to TSMC instead of Samsung.

So why do Samsung often choose CPUs from STMicroelectronics? Are they also a partner?

 

[Fx1]

So are you saying that you cant get LTE supporting Galaxy S3 phones with a Samsung CPU?

And Samsung doesnt make 500 million phones, yet alone smartphones. The 500-510 million is what they hope to sell in 2013. Plus Apple is moving to TSMC instead of Samsung.

So why do Samsung often choose CPUs from STMicroelectronics? Are they also a partner?

At the time yes. Thats why the US version got crappy S4 dual cores and Korea got Quad Core Exynos 5 with LTE.

It was something to do with the LTE bands and a chip that wasnt available at the time

 

[ShintaiDK]

At the time yes. Thats why the US version got crappy S4 dual cores and Korea got Quad Core Exynos 5 with LTE.

It was something to do with the LTE bands and a chip that wasnt available at the time

The korean market got the Exynos 4, not 5.

And the International GT-I9305 got LTE as well with Samsung.

All these models are nothing new for Samsung. Thats what they always do.

They dont care much about what chip they use and never did. They only care about the profit. And there is much more profit selling a smartphone that cost 200$ to make for 600$. Than it is to maybe not sell one of idealogical reason so the semiconductor part of Samsung can make a potential 10$ on a 20-25$ chip.

Same reason why everyone will buy Intel chips for their smartphones if the chips are better than ARM variants. The huge profit on smartphones are simply too much to look past. Samsung wants to sell the phone, not the chip.

 

[kache]

"It's my job to make all form factors of computing machines run on our processors. To be completely candid (personal opinion disclaimer), with what I know is coming from Intel, the likelihood of ARM getting into the PC space is very low. Nevertheless, we're not taking our foot off the gas. For mobile, we have no choice but to become relevant. As for when, my personal prediction for substantial growth is Q1 2014, domination in 2015."

Boom. Goodbye, ARM. Not only is Intel's focus now on low power, but it's got many years of experience of high end CPU design to leverage here.

Ye, it's gonna be fun.

 

[kache]

wish i could read the whole Q&A but i cant stand the layout of that website. its too cluttered and muddled to figure out who said what

I have same problem with the PC version. The Android mobile app makes it a pleasure to read, though. It made me rediscover that site.

 

[kache]

Yeah. Larrabee was a failure because Intel never even got it to the point where they could put a GPU on the market. Intel already has a low-power CPU that fits right into a cell phone. Now it's only a matter of tweaking the architecture to make a really appealing product. I've never expected Intel to take off on phones until they brought their ultra mobile architecture in line with the desktop architecture (or rather, the opposite). Once that happens though, competitors are going to feel it.

Intel is in a strong enough position that they're not going to lose the notebook market, and they're going to be pushing hard into the tablet market, especially now that Windows 8 has arrived to bring Windows 8 x86 backwards compatibility to the tablet space (as long as it's not RT...). ARM doesn't have prayer of touching the desktop. The only thing that seems to be out of Intel's reach is the mobile phone market, and only just; not because of inferior technology, but because they don't have a foothold in the market. If Intel adopts the policy that this employee indicated -- "we have no choice but to become relevant" -- that means they will probably end up breaking the business restraints they've placed on themselves and their OEM customers that have kept them from gaining market share. If Intel can flood the phone market with low cost Atoms and the tablet market with low cost, low power Cores by 2014, OEMs will be hooked, and "domination" will be within reach.

It would also solve the main issue Surface Pro has now: temperature and battery life, and that's gonna make it awesome.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I found it interesting he listed Samsung and Qualcomm as Intel's biggest long-term competitors. Does he mean just in terms of mobile, with SoCs/design wins, or overall?

 

[ShintaiDK]

I found it interesting he listed Samsung and Qualcomm as Intel's biggest long-term competitors. Does he mean just in terms of mobile, with SoCs/design wins, or overall?

Size perhaps:

 

[TuxDave]

I found it interesting he listed Samsung and Qualcomm as Intel's biggest long-term competitors. Does he mean just in terms of mobile, with SoCs/design wins, or overall?

Who would you list as the biggest long term competitor?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Size perhaps:

I guess. Samsung have their own fabs, but the three aren't really in the same industry. Intel has ambitions for the mobile space where they all compete, but neither compete with Intel in the desktop or server markets (though both might have plans for A15 ARM server processors, I guess), and Samsung and Qualcomm both have other areas of technology in which Intel has no plans at all.

Who would you list as the biggest long term competitor?

I don't know, never really thought of it before. I'd probably put Apple in one of the top 2, though.

 

[TuxDave]

I don't know, never really thought of it before. I'd probably put Apple in one of the top 2, though.

Apple? As far as I see it, Intel's objective is to have every OEM on the planet use an Intel part. They haven't done the "compete against the customers" as Google or Microsoft or Samsung has done. OEMs use Intel, Intel doesn't directly sell Intel devices, everyone's happy.

The competitors would be those that can substitute for Intel which are Samsung and Qualcomm parts. Apple's CPU design ALSO competes against Intel for the Apple products but it's only for the Apple slice of the pie. So you're right that Apple sort of competes against Intel, it's only for Apple products and that may be a valid point if the revenue gain or loss potential of losing Apple's business to its own design team outweights the revenue gain or loss potential of non-Apple business.

For everything else, there's Samsung and Qualcomm. Samsung is a beast because of its fab capacity and R&D revenue. They have a design team on the side, so it LOOKs like Intel. Qualcomm on the other hand is a fabless version of Intel. They can get any OEM to come to them, tell them what they want and Qualcomm will churn out an SoC with all the bells and whistles. Again, a competiting product that goes against Intel's objectives.

 

[blackened23]

I guess. Samsung have their own fabs, but the three aren't really in the same industry. Intel has ambitions for the mobile space where they all compete, but neither compete with Intel in the desktop or server markets (though both might have plans for A15 ARM server processors, I guess), and Samsung and Qualcomm both have other areas of technology in which Intel has no plans at all.

I would disagree. Intel is in the business of creating computing products, and since computing is increasingly going mobile for non-performance uses (ie for the average joe) - intel has no choice but to become relevant. So in that sense I think intel is competing with samsung and qualcomm.

Of course enterprise is important as well and intel dominates in that area -- they are far ahead of everyone else in terms of performance. Yet, that is only one slice of the pie. For consumer mobile computing, intel is in a good spot performance wise, and is catching up in terms of power use/performance.

 

[Haserath]

You wouldn't be willing to pay for it.

Die area without node information is meaningless. 160mm^2 @ 22nm is pretty much the same as 300mm^2 @ 32nm . Each shrink has massive capital costs and as such, we get a smaller die because few are willing to pay the price of the same die area with the premium needed to fund the node shrink and continued R&D.

Depends... They sell SB-E for $600 and it's a 435 mm^2 die, albeit cut down from Xeon dies.

Plus you don't know the node information either.()

It really depends on Intel's goal more than anything, I would assume.

Read some of the threads on here. There are a disturbing number of people who actually believe that igpus are something other than a step backwards and will lead the way to faster graphics...

All they really do is lower the cost of the very, very low end while the rest of us subsidize their development and are stuck with a rather significant die area that we will never get any use out of.

Have you ever thought Intel might actually make more with an igpu?

100mm^2 is SOC size. Those cost, what, $20 to fab compared to the $40 for a 160mm^2 die? Then the IGP gets them more sales.

They won't ever be faster than dGPU, but they may allow people like me to stick with IGP.