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How big do you have to be to get custom Intel or AMD silicon?

I think the term custom chips is abit misleading. Its simply a model of exisiting chips. For example like the more exotic 4.4Ghz Dualcore.
 
Not very big at all: if you go up to Intel and say I want a SB or IB 'K' processor they look at your wallet and if you're loaded you get a 2600K/3770K, if you're not they quickly fuse off some cache and HT and sell you a 2500K/3570K...

I know that's not quiet the way it actually works but :whiste:
 
Phynaz said:
Did you read the article? AMD is saying they've added instructions for customers.
Click to expand...

wait.. when did amd get fabs again?

I know TMSC does custom orders.
So does IBM, TI, and a lot of other companies which normal consumers dont use though standard channels.

What did u mean about custom silicon?
Do you mean an entirely new processor like a x86 processor?

Because if u were going after an ARM processor, knocking on intel's door would be massive fail.
 
aigomorla said:
wait.. when did amd get fabs again?

I know TMSC does custom orders.
So does IBM, TI, and a lot of other companies which normal consumers dont use though standard channels.

What did u mean about custom silicon?
Do you mean an entirely new processor like a x86 processor?

Because if u were going after an ARM processor, knocking on intel's door would be massive fail.
Click to expand...

It's more like "Google says they really need an instruction that does BLAH"
.... some stuff
Intel processors now have instructions that do BLAH.

Many major software customers ask for hardware improvements to support whatever they want in software. They don't always get it though.
 
Phynaz said:
Did you read the article? AMD is saying they've added instructions for customers.
Click to expand...

I take this to mean they (Intel) weight their willingness to implement ISA extensions based on the expectations given to them regarding the prospects of future sales if said future processors contained said ISA extensions.

In other words Intel didn't just decide in a vacuum that the world needed SSE4.2 or FMA. They were probably given unsolicited and solicited guidance that such ISA extensions would be most appreciated (sales) by specific big-name high-volume customers and based on those inputs they put their design teams to work on ensuring their grand(er) plans incorporated and comprehended those inputs such that the final product made as many fat-walleted customers happy as possible at the same time.

Mask sets are expensive, but even more expensive is the validation process. Just look at the year long gap between SB and SBE. That is a few hundred engineers soaking up an extra year's worth of compensation package just to validate the functionality of a pre existing CPU's microarchitecture with a few extra circuits built into it.

I doubt the value add for whatever extra spice a facebook or a google might extract from having just a few more specialized instructions added on top of that could ever be met by the added expense versus that same company just buying an equal amount of extra processing power in terms of adding more boxes to an existing server farm.

If the value (performance) added was really that great then they probably wouldn't be running x86 in the first place, they'd go completely customized Power7 or Itanium at that point IMO.
 
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