- Dec 25, 2013
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Intel: complete year in review 2017
This year has been a very interesting one.
Intel had to combat AMD with its Ryzen, Threadripper and Mobile CPUs. They launched Kaby Lake-S in January, but in October already we got Coffee Lake-S. Intel, or so it goes (they themselves claim they upped their X-series after the success of 10-core BDW-X), got caught off-guard with Threadripper and made the MCC die available to consumers with Skylake-X, going from 10-core to 18-core in 1 generation. Kaby Lake-R launched well before Ryzen Mobile and doubled the amount of cores for 15W SKUs.
They had to witness how Nvidia preemptively made its GPUs more ASIC-like by adding Tensor cores, increasing performance by over 3x compared to the FP16 units, making the advancement that Nervana will bring with its dedicated NNP (neural network processor) on 28nm significantly less impressive. However, both Lake Crest as well as the last Knights many-core member, Knights Mill, are on their way to the market now as of December. Also in December, Gemini Lake launched with the updated Goldmont Plus core.
Further, they saw both AMD and Qualcomm violently attack Intel’s highest margin, highest ASP CPU business, the data center, with Epic and Centriq. Contrary to both SKUs, though, Intel launched its significant Skylake SP (scalable processor) upgrade, although it lacks a few of the features Intel originally had on the roadmap for Purley in 2015 (namely Cannonlake dGPU, 3DXP DIMMs and the integrated FPGA).
Xilinx this year also had the 16/14nm node for itself. Intel’s Stratix 10, and the first product with EMIB, launched in Q4. Variants includes FPGAs with Cortex A53s; HBM2 and faster transceivers and other SKUs will follow in 2018. The disclosed initial Falcon Mesa 10nm FPGA details, which has been in development in parallel with Stratix 10 since Altera got acquired in 2015 – utilizing Intel’s bigger resources to accelerate the 10nm timing. Falcon Mesa will sample in 2018. It will have 112G transceivers, HBM3 and EMIB2.
In a significant milestone, Intel was the first in the industry to ramp 64-layer 3D NAND mid-year.
Intel made itself a serious player in automotive with the high profile March Mobileye acquisition which finished in August. They plan to get 100 vehicles on the roads, and announced their Go end-to-end platform at CES in January.
Also in March, Intel started rolling out its new 3D XPoint memory architecture. It started with 16/32GB cards to accelerate HDDs and a bigger enterprise drive (with capacity of 1.5TB now available), with the mainstream Optane 900P SSD in October. The 3D XPoint DIMMs will follow in H2’18 with Cascade Lake, almost 1.5 years after the SSDs.
In the last few months of the year, a number of other significant announcements followed.
Intel made public its Loihi neuromorphic chip, built on 14nm and going into production next year.
They made a 17 qubit superconductor chip for quantum computing.
They announced their wireless roadmap through 2018, with gigabit Wi-Fi coming, XMM 7560 next year with CDMA built on 14nm and XMM 7660 in 2019 with up to 1.6Gbps – potentially finally catching up to Qualcomm. For 5G they announced the XMM 8080 for mid-2019. Both 2019 chips are rumored to be built on 10nm.
Just as significantly, Intel announced in big week for the graphics industry in November that they had hired Raja Koduri from AMD and are planning to enter the discrete GPU market. I feel obliged to re-iterate that Intel will NOT use their GPUs for deep learning applications – that’s the domain of the Nervana NNP. GPUs are not made for deep learning. Coupled with this was the first instantiation of Intel’s renewed focus on graphics, the collab with AMD for Kaby-G. You can also see Kaby-G as test case for EMIB.
I’d expect the first discrete GPU from Intel to be 10nm Gen10 or Gen11-based in early 2019.
Intel’s Movidius launched the Myriad X VPU (vision processing unit) for AI (inference) at the IoT edge with 1 TOPS (4 TOPS total), and a few devices with the Myriad 2 launched (Google Clips).
Last, but not least, let’s talk manufacturing. We’ve known since early 2016 that Intel’s 2018 line-up would mainly consist of 14nm parts (Coffee Lake, 14nm++), but late year we’ve seen Whiskey Lake (14nm+++) being added to the roadmap and so far no known 10nm *desktop* parts. As for end October, BK re-iterated (as was first confirmed in March) that 10nm would ship around CES, with 10nm ramping throughout the year to high volume. With Whiskey Lake now in the mix next to Kaby-R and Coffee Lake, it’s unclear how much room there is for volume 10nm parts in 2018. So naturally one should expect the full 10nm ramp in 2019.
Now, given the scarce details about the 10nm health, coupled with repeated reports from Charlie from SemiAccurate that 10nm is broken, this has led to a lot of speculation. Folks with other sources, namely Fudzilla and David Schor, have instead argued that 10nm’s yield is not as bad as people are led to think, but instead Intel is delaying 10nm for as long as possible as to maximize profits and minimize gross margin loss.
Intel held its first Technology and Manufacturing Day in March, detailing its 10nm node. Significantly as well, Intel re-iterated its intention to grow its foundry franchise and for that purpose (as well as for its own products) has created the 22FLL node, as competitor for Global Foundries’ 22nm FD-SOI and TSMC’s new 22nm planar node.
Also feel free too at my analysis of Intel earlier this year about their roadmap delays: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/in-depth-analysis-intel-roadmap-execution-since-2014.2501657/.
Timeline
Note: I cannot guarantee completeness
(for instance, I have omitted security news, like those concerning the ME. If I have missed something, feel free to let me know.)
Feb 3: https://hardforum.com/threads/from-ati-to-amd-back-to-ati-a-journey-in-futility-h.1900681/page-73#post-1042798047
2017
Edit, additions:
This year has been a very interesting one.
Intel had to combat AMD with its Ryzen, Threadripper and Mobile CPUs. They launched Kaby Lake-S in January, but in October already we got Coffee Lake-S. Intel, or so it goes (they themselves claim they upped their X-series after the success of 10-core BDW-X), got caught off-guard with Threadripper and made the MCC die available to consumers with Skylake-X, going from 10-core to 18-core in 1 generation. Kaby Lake-R launched well before Ryzen Mobile and doubled the amount of cores for 15W SKUs.
They had to witness how Nvidia preemptively made its GPUs more ASIC-like by adding Tensor cores, increasing performance by over 3x compared to the FP16 units, making the advancement that Nervana will bring with its dedicated NNP (neural network processor) on 28nm significantly less impressive. However, both Lake Crest as well as the last Knights many-core member, Knights Mill, are on their way to the market now as of December. Also in December, Gemini Lake launched with the updated Goldmont Plus core.
Further, they saw both AMD and Qualcomm violently attack Intel’s highest margin, highest ASP CPU business, the data center, with Epic and Centriq. Contrary to both SKUs, though, Intel launched its significant Skylake SP (scalable processor) upgrade, although it lacks a few of the features Intel originally had on the roadmap for Purley in 2015 (namely Cannonlake dGPU, 3DXP DIMMs and the integrated FPGA).
Xilinx this year also had the 16/14nm node for itself. Intel’s Stratix 10, and the first product with EMIB, launched in Q4. Variants includes FPGAs with Cortex A53s; HBM2 and faster transceivers and other SKUs will follow in 2018. The disclosed initial Falcon Mesa 10nm FPGA details, which has been in development in parallel with Stratix 10 since Altera got acquired in 2015 – utilizing Intel’s bigger resources to accelerate the 10nm timing. Falcon Mesa will sample in 2018. It will have 112G transceivers, HBM3 and EMIB2.
In a significant milestone, Intel was the first in the industry to ramp 64-layer 3D NAND mid-year.
Intel made itself a serious player in automotive with the high profile March Mobileye acquisition which finished in August. They plan to get 100 vehicles on the roads, and announced their Go end-to-end platform at CES in January.
Also in March, Intel started rolling out its new 3D XPoint memory architecture. It started with 16/32GB cards to accelerate HDDs and a bigger enterprise drive (with capacity of 1.5TB now available), with the mainstream Optane 900P SSD in October. The 3D XPoint DIMMs will follow in H2’18 with Cascade Lake, almost 1.5 years after the SSDs.
In the last few months of the year, a number of other significant announcements followed.
Intel made public its Loihi neuromorphic chip, built on 14nm and going into production next year.
They made a 17 qubit superconductor chip for quantum computing.
They announced their wireless roadmap through 2018, with gigabit Wi-Fi coming, XMM 7560 next year with CDMA built on 14nm and XMM 7660 in 2019 with up to 1.6Gbps – potentially finally catching up to Qualcomm. For 5G they announced the XMM 8080 for mid-2019. Both 2019 chips are rumored to be built on 10nm.
Just as significantly, Intel announced in big week for the graphics industry in November that they had hired Raja Koduri from AMD and are planning to enter the discrete GPU market. I feel obliged to re-iterate that Intel will NOT use their GPUs for deep learning applications – that’s the domain of the Nervana NNP. GPUs are not made for deep learning. Coupled with this was the first instantiation of Intel’s renewed focus on graphics, the collab with AMD for Kaby-G. You can also see Kaby-G as test case for EMIB.
I’d expect the first discrete GPU from Intel to be 10nm Gen10 or Gen11-based in early 2019.
Intel’s Movidius launched the Myriad X VPU (vision processing unit) for AI (inference) at the IoT edge with 1 TOPS (4 TOPS total), and a few devices with the Myriad 2 launched (Google Clips).
Last, but not least, let’s talk manufacturing. We’ve known since early 2016 that Intel’s 2018 line-up would mainly consist of 14nm parts (Coffee Lake, 14nm++), but late year we’ve seen Whiskey Lake (14nm+++) being added to the roadmap and so far no known 10nm *desktop* parts. As for end October, BK re-iterated (as was first confirmed in March) that 10nm would ship around CES, with 10nm ramping throughout the year to high volume. With Whiskey Lake now in the mix next to Kaby-R and Coffee Lake, it’s unclear how much room there is for volume 10nm parts in 2018. So naturally one should expect the full 10nm ramp in 2019.
Now, given the scarce details about the 10nm health, coupled with repeated reports from Charlie from SemiAccurate that 10nm is broken, this has led to a lot of speculation. Folks with other sources, namely Fudzilla and David Schor, have instead argued that 10nm’s yield is not as bad as people are led to think, but instead Intel is delaying 10nm for as long as possible as to maximize profits and minimize gross margin loss.
Intel held its first Technology and Manufacturing Day in March, detailing its 10nm node. Significantly as well, Intel re-iterated its intention to grow its foundry franchise and for that purpose (as well as for its own products) has created the 22FLL node, as competitor for Global Foundries’ 22nm FD-SOI and TSMC’s new 22nm planar node.
Also feel free too at my analysis of Intel earlier this year about their roadmap delays: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/in-depth-analysis-intel-roadmap-execution-since-2014.2501657/.
Timeline
Note: I cannot guarantee completeness
(for instance, I have omitted security news, like those concerning the ME. If I have missed something, feel free to let me know.)
- November 15 (2016): BK announces Intel to invest $250M in autonomous driving – they had acquired computer vision software company Itseez in May (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-announces-250-million-investment-autonomous-driving/)
- November 16 (2016): Intel lays out AI strategy with Nervana’s (acquired in August) Lake Crest (with yearly product cadence), Movidius’ IoT portfolio (acquired in September), Knights Mill to be 4x faster than KNL, Knights Crest to be in-house fabbed by 2020 and coupled with Intel CPU, and the Intel CPU+FPGA on-package combo (https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/intel-announcements-for-ai-nervana-100x-faster-than-gpu-knights-crest-mill-4x-faster-skl-mid-17.2492191/)
- November 16 (2016): Intel abandons wearable market, also see https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/06/basis-wearables-are-probably-dead/
- November 29 (2016): Intel, Mobileye and Delphi announce collab (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/business/intel-to-team-with-delphi-and-mobileye-for-self-driving-cars.html)
- December 5 (2016): Via a PCN (product change notification), Intel to retire GT4e mid-2017
- December 5 (2016): Kyle Bennett’s rumor of the AMD collab emerges, but he reports it incorrectly as a licensing deal. Later (in May), when the rumor resurfaces, Intel denies licensing from AMD. (https://hardforum.com/threads/from-ati-to-amd-back-to-ati-a-journey-in-futility-h.1900681/page-61#post-1042685022)
Feb 3: https://hardforum.com/threads/from-ati-to-amd-back-to-ati-a-journey-in-futility-h.1900681/page-73#post-1042798047
- December 26 (2016): Rumor of Kaby Lake-R as 8th Gen published by Benchlife, to launch in August (also mention of Coffee Lake-U 4+3e and Coffee Lake-H 6+2 besides CFL-S/X) – Kaby Lake-H (18W) gets canceled (https://benchlife.info/intel-cancel-18w-kaby-lake-h-and-use-kaby-lake-r-replace-12262016/)
2017
- January 4: Launch of full Kaby Lake(-S) line-up: adds HT to Pentium, first Core i3 with overclocking support
- January 4: Announces NUCs with KBL, thunderbolt 3 and Optane support
- January 4: Announces Goldridge (“world’s first global”) 5G modem (reaction to Qualcomm X50 which was announced in October) (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-accelerates-the-future-with-first-global-5g-modem/)
- January 4: Announces Go end-to-end platform with next-gen Atom, Xeon, 5G and Arria 10, and 40 autonomous cars to hit the road in 2017 (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/spanning-car-connectivity-cloud-intel-go-platforms-lead-way-automated-driving/) which is re-iterated in August (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-mobileye-integration-plans-build-fleet-autonomous-test-cars/)
- January 4: Announces Compute Card (August launch)
- January 23: Rumor of SKL-X and KBL-X with X299 platform to launch in August at Gamescom
- February 8: Intel announces $7B investment in Fab 42 for 7nm (https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-supports-american-innovation-7-billion-investment-next-generation-semiconductor-factory-arizona/)
- February 9: Investor Meeting 2017: Announces data center first strategy for new process nodes starting with 10nm++ and mentions EMIB; lays out the companies’ strategy for IoT, FPGA, DCG, AI, automotive, networking, 3D NAND/XPoint and more. Also confirms 3D XPoint ramp delay to 2018 (instead of Skylake-SP) and Soft Machines acquisition. (https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/intel-investor-meeting-2017-february-9.2498913/)
- February 15: Kittson. RIP Itanium, you brought nothing good to this world. (https://www.itworld.com/article/3169622/cpu-processors/intel-ships-latest-itanium-chip-called-kittson-but-grim-future-looms.html)
- February 21: Announces XMM 7560 first Gigabit 4G modem, and 5G announcements at MWC (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-building-5g-revolution-today/)
- February 22: Announces 14nm Atom C3000 for mid-2017, with up to cores (up from 8 with C2000 from 2013) (https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2017/02/Xeon-D-Atom-C-QAT-25GBE-Fact-Sheet.pdf)
- February 27: Spreadtrum announces Intel 14nm SoC (http://spreadtrum.com/en/show_news.html?id=fe766282-e9cc-4ffd-b211-e3d19675d3f7)
- March 13: Intel acquires Mobileye for $15B (http://intelandmobileye.transactionannouncement.com/)
- March 16: Intel mentions price of Project Alloy starting at $600. It was announced in August 2016, but canceled in 2017. (https://iq.intel.com/how-computer-vision-is-transforming-vr-into-merged-reality/?_topic=tech-innovation&wapkw=project+alloy)
- March 19: Intel launches 3X XPoint Optane SSD (https://www.anandtech.com/show/11208/intel-introduces-optane-ssd-dc-p4800x-with-3d-xpoint-memory)
- March 23: Intel creates Artificial Intelligence Products Group and AI Labs (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/making-future-starts-with-focus-ai/)
- March 28: Intel Technology and Manufacturing Day 2017. Disclosed 10nm details, announces 22FFL which will be read EOY’17, details EMIB packaging mix-and-match vision and foundry vision. Also shows a 28-core Skylake-SP die. (http://intelstudios.edgesuite.net/170328_itmd/start_a.html)
- April 4: Intel divests from Intel Security
- April 10: Rumor of pull-in of SKL/KBL-X to Computex
- April 18: Intel stops IDF
- April 28: Intel increases FY2017 outlook by $0.5B to $60B
- May 12: Core i9 line-up and specs up to 12 cores (Sweepr) (https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/intel-skylake-kaby-lake.2428363/page-417#post-38889905)
- May 19: Intel denies licensing from AMD
- May 24: Intel sells of major portion of ASML shares from 2012 investment (from 14.5% to 8.5%)
- (December 1: Intel cuts ASML shares to less than 5%.)
- May 24: Intel opens up Thunderbolt 3 (no more royalties) and plans to integrate in CPUs (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/envision-world-thunderbolt-3-everywhere/)
- May 30: Intel introduces Core i9 SKL-X with up to 18 cores (surprise!): new cache and mesh-interconnect
- June 8: 10nm Milestone: Cannonlake on-track and tape-in Icelake (https://twitter.com/intelnews/status/872844756845379584)
- June 26: Intel launches first 64 layer 3D NAND (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-takes-another-major-step-memory-leadership/)
- July 12: Intel launches Skylake-SP with up to 28 cores, 6 memory channels, ultra path, changed caching, mesh, AVX-512, etc. (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-xeon-scalable-processor-family-data-center/)
- July 20: Intel launches Movidius Neural Computer Stick (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-democratizes-deep-learning-application-development-launch-movidius-neural-compute-stick/)
- July 24: @FPiednoel leaves Intel
- July 28: Intel increases FY2017 outlook for second time, by $1.3B, to $61.3B. Also announces 10nm availability EOY with ramp in H1. (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4091666-intel-intc-q2-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single)
- August 21: Announces 8th Gen Kaby Lake-R 15W quadcores
- August 22: Microsoft Stratix 10 based project Brainwave AI inferencing platform. Also at Hot Chips: EMIB and Knights Mill presentations. (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-delivers-real-time-ai-microsofts-accelerated-deep-learning-platform/?_ga=2.182851617.607056034.1513896840-2003396332.1510489034)
- August 28: Xeon-W for workstations
- September 6: Rumor: Intel foundry customer bails out, probably LG (https://semiaccurate.com/2017/09/06/intel-foundry-customer-bails/)
- September 7: leaked 2018 chipset roadmap with Z390 (https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/intel-skylake-kaby-lake.2428363/page-623#post-39066543)
- September 19: Announcement Waymo’s autonomous cars contain Intel hardware
- September 24: Intel launches 14nm++ Coffee Lake (https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-unveils-8th-gen-intel-core-processor-family-desktop/)
- September 17: Intel’s corporate financial 3-year outlook (http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2017/09/inside_intels_300_billion_five.html)
- September 18: Mfg Day China, Falcon Mesa (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-technology-manufacturing-day-china/)
- September 25: Intel stops Project Alloy due to lack of computing power
- September 26: Intel announces Loihi 14nm neuromorphic chip with a mesh of 140k neurons (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intels-new-self-learning-chip-promises-accelerate-artificial-intelligence/)
- September 28: More CFL chipset / GLK rumors (https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3069-hw-news-intel-h370-b360-zen2-aib-partner-vega-cards)
- October 4: RIP Paul Otellini
- October 10: Intel shuts down Recon HUD factory
- October 10: Intel delivers 17 qubit superconducting test chip for quantum computing (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-delivers-17-qubit-superconducting-chip-advanced-packaging-qutech/)
- October 17: Intel announces Nervana Lake Crest NNP with Flexpoint architecture (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-pioneers-new-technologies-advance-artificial-intelligence/?_ga=2.60947630.327928771.1513897145-2003396332.1510489034)
- October 25: Intel ships Stratix 10 (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-enables-5g-nfv-data-centers-high-performance-high-density-arm-based-intel-stratix-10-fpga/)
- October 27: Intel increase FY2017 outlook for third quarter in a row, by $0.7B to $62B. BK re-iterates 10nm ramp schedule
- October 31: Rumor: Apple considers ditching Qualcomm comepletely
- November 6: Intel announces Kaby-G, a Kaby-H quadcore with Vega GPU, HBM2, EMIB and a power sharing framework (https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/new-intel-core-processor-combine-high-performance-cpu-discrete-graphics-sleek-thin-devices/)
- November 8: Raja Koduri joins Intel. Intel will enter the high-end discrete GPU market and edge computing, newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group, declares war to Nvidia. (https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/raja-koduri-joins-intel/)
- November 10: Optane SSD now up to 750GB
- November 14: Intel cancels Knights Hill (after earlier rumors, eg the team was reportedly fired in the 2016 reorg iirc), will use new architecture for exascale
- November 15: Heise ICX-H rumor etc. (https://heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Xeon-Phi-ist-tot-es-lebe-der-Xeon-H-3891026.html)
- November 16: Intel samples 3D XPoint DIMMs, confirms for H2’18 launch
- November 16: Intel announces 2018-2019 wireless roadmap: XMM 7560, 7660, 8080, and will integrate Wi-Fi in chipset (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-introduces-portfolio-new-commercial-5g-new-radio-modem-family/)
- November 22: Whiskey Lake gets leaked, to be built on 14nm+++ and is 4+2 configuration (https://twitter.com/TMFChipFool/status/933232494790529024) + Monette Hill (https://twitter.com/TMFChipFool/status/938159206674386944)
- November 26: Rumor: 9th Gen will be fully Icelake (https://twitter.com/FanlessTech/status/934580364575756294)
- December 2: Rumor: successor of Tiger Lake is Alder Lake (https://twitter.com/TMFChipFool/status/936829260391620609)
- December 4: Cascade Lake-X EOY’18 roadmap
- December 7: IEDM 2017. 22FFL qualified, uses 6T library.
- December 11: Pentium Silver and Gold <3 (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/introducing-new-intel-pentium-silver-intel-celeron-processors/)
- December 18: Intel “unveils first FPGA with HBM” (https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-unveils-industrys-first-fpga-integrated-high-bandwidth-memory-built-acceleration/)
- December 19: Intel launches Knights Mill
- December 21: Intel year in review (https://www.intelnervana.com/intel-ai-2017/ and https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-2017-year-in-review/)
Edit, additions:
- XMM 7460 launched in the iPhones
- Intel compared Mobileye's EyeQ5 to Nvidia Xavier in November (https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332665)
- There are multiple news articles about IEDM 2017 (22nm, 10nm) on the internet, from WIkichip, Semimd, EETimes, etc.
Last edited:
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