Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread

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Zucker2k

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2006
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For a little comedy, Rocket Lake overclocked using LN2 to a very nice 6.9 Ghz.
Not bad for an all core overclock on pre-release bios, actually. Plus 6666 MHz RAM overclock? That's just insane. The IMC on Rocket Lake-S is looking to be killer.
 
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Asterox

Golden Member
May 15, 2012
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For a little comedy, Rocket Lake overclocked using LN2 to a very nice 6.9 Ghz.

Only for show, hm at that CPU clock power consumption is probably RX 6800 X2. :mask:
 

Zucker2k

Golden Member
Feb 15, 2006
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Intel still contemplating giving rival TSMC some business. Indecision seems to indicate 7nm is on the verge of breaking through, or, still in the woods. Your take.

Edit:
TSMC, the largest maker of semiconductors for other companies, is preparing to offer Intel chips manufactured using a 4-nanometer process, with initial testing using an older 5-nanometer process, according to the people. The company has said it will make test production of 4-nanometer chips available in the fourth quarter of 2021 and volume shipments the following year.
The Taiwanese company expects to have a new facility in Baoshan operational by the end of this year, which can be converted to production for Intel if required, one of the people said. TSMC executives previously said the new Baoshan unit would house a research center with 8,000 engineers.
 
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clemsyn

Senior member
Aug 21, 2005
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Intel still contemplating giving rival TSMC some business. Indecision seems to indicate 7nm is on the verge of breaking through, or, still in the woods. Your take.

Edit:

I would say "STILL IN THE WOODS". They failed on this over and over again and I don't even think they are close to a breakthrough. BK and Murthy is at fault (Murthy more) but they have to give some business to TSMC or they will get left behind.
 

CHADBOGA

Platinum Member
Mar 31, 2009
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For a little comedy, Rocket Lake overclocked using LN2 to a very nice 6.9 Ghz.
One of my pet hates is the publicity given to LN2 overclocks of CPU's. :mad:

So meaningless.
 

mikk

Diamond Member
May 15, 2012
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Intel still contemplating giving rival TSMC some business. Indecision seems to indicate 7nm is on the verge of breaking through, or, still in the woods. Your take.

Edit:


Even if 7nm is ready, they won't have the volume for everything. It makes sense for Intel to continue with TSMC on GPU chips. And we know Xe is compatible with TSMC because DG2 is made on TSMC 6nm apparently.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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Even if 7nm is ready, they won't have the volume for everything. It makes sense for Intel to continue with TSMC on GPU chips. And we know Xe is compatible with TSMC because DG2 is made on TSMC 6nm apparently.

This is about them fabbing CPUs at TSMC. Given the design costs, you aren't doing this just for extra volume, you are doing this because your products will be uncomptitive if you don't. It becomes a political issue because there are a lot of people at Intel who will lose their jobs if they move forward with this.

Given the lead times too, we are talking about late 2022-2023 products at the earliest.
 

LightningZ71

Golden Member
Mar 10, 2017
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I concur with it being 2022-2023 product if the article is true. TSMC only hit volume with their base N5 process in 20q4. It'll be mid year before we start seeing volume with N5P or any other N5 refinements. The article referencing N4 does a good job of sealing this for commercial product next year at the earliest.

I also concur that, if Intel is really doing this, they have a very real concern that they won't have good yield and volume on their 7nm process in time for it to be leading edge competitive.
 

COAk

Junior Member
Jan 4, 2021
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This is about them fabbing CPUs at TSMC. Given the design costs, you aren't doing this just for extra volume, you are doing this because your products will be uncomptitive if you don't.

I think a concern may be that manufacturing at TSMC would lead to problems with being competitive with other companies that manufature on the exact same node (how do you differentiate the products if they perform the same? e.g. Altera, nVidia). If Intel does choose TSMC as external foundries, they must have thought that the benefits of manufacturing there will outweigh this concern, which in turn means that Intel 7nm is not only doing poorly on yields, but also is more expensive(I remeber reading somewhere that TSMC taking 50% profits per wafer) and less performant(maybe leakage wise, IDK). The converse can be true.

However, I will not rule out that Intel will continue on 7nm though, because currently the only issue known to the public is yields.
 

LightningZ71

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Mar 10, 2017
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There's no reason that Intel wouldn't continue to develop products on their 7nm node, assuming that they continue to make progress on developing the node. From what little concrete information that we have, it will still be one of the three best nodes available for mass production should it achieve commercially viable yields. As we see them doing with Rocket Lake, they are using it for just the i7/i9 11th gen desktop and keeping the existing 10th gen small core with spec tweaks to occupy the lower end products. There is no reason that Intel couldn't use their 7nm node for, say, their 13th gen i9/i7 products and the 10esf node for the i5 and below. Yes, they fracture their line, but, they already make multiple separate die for the line, so it's not as bad as it could be.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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Videocardz also has the PR on Tiger Lake H35. There is indeed a Special Edition SKU with 5 Ghz turbo.
 

ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
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Videocardz also has the PR on Tiger Lake H35. There is indeed a Special Edition SKU with 5 Ghz turbo.
Actually seems like bad news to me. The fact that they are releasing a "special edition" (i.e. still stuck on quad cores), makes me wonder even more about the viability of 8 core Tiger Lake.
 

SAAA

Senior member
May 14, 2014
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Actually seems like bad news to me. The fact that they are releasing a "special edition" (i.e. still stuck on quad cores), makes me wonder even more about the viability of 8 core Tiger Lake.
They talked about both 8 cores Tiger lake H and Alder Lake on 10nm ESF. If they had volume since last year on 4 cores chips with large IGP I don't see it impossible by this year end for most products to migrate on 10 nm, with the limited run of Rocket Lake being the last of 14nm. They hinted the crossover is happening.
 

mikk

Diamond Member
May 15, 2012
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Actually seems like bad news to me. The fact that they are releasing a "special edition" (i.e. still stuck on quad cores), makes me wonder even more about the viability of 8 core Tiger Lake.

TGL H35 is unrelated to TGL-H 8C, it's TGL-UP3 and therefore they can bring it earlier. It's known for quite some time.
 

ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
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TGL H35 is unrelated to TGL-H 8C, it's TGL-UP3 and therefore they can bring it earlier. It's known for quite some time.
It may be unrelated, but still seems to me like a six or eight core is what they really need for gaming, not just a couple hundred extra mhz on a highly binned sku.
 

mikk

Diamond Member
May 15, 2012
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Here is the sneak peek of Alder Lake:


He says it's a significant breakthrough in x86 performance.
 

Kocicak

Senior member
Jan 17, 2019
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I just finished watching the whole presentation here:


And Intel said nothing abou upcoming desktop processors. In the end they showed Alder lake running Windows playing some movie. Again almost nothing about it, except it has large and small cores and it is made on 10nm process.