Intel's planned comeback: 10nm production now surpassing 14nm, 7nm remains a work in progress

[Watzupken]

No fanboy, but Intel isn't and doesn't need to make any 'comeback'. They are still a world leader in semiconductors and have the profit reports to prove it. If anything they continue to solidify their dominance even when the competition's technology outpaces them at times. When their progress goes stagnant, their marketing and installed base maintain high margins. If their foray into the discrete graphics market is even moderately successful, it will put much needed pressure on both amd and nvidia.

From a market share standpoint, this is true. But from a reputation standpoint, they need to work on reinforcing it. Don't get me wrong, Intel is still a very reputable company, but competition have been building up their reputation as a good alternative to Intel. Which is why companies are migrating to the likes of AMD. Cost is one reason, but if you know a company's product is not reliable or as good, you may not consider their products for critical usage even if it is cheaper. And this is substantiated by the fact that AMD's DC sales is improving at the expense of Intel's.

 

[Kosmoz]

It depends in Zen3+ comes to all the range. It may only come to 5900/5950. But I would still wait for Zen4, I'm in no rush to update my Zen1 1700X and would rather wait for AM5 MB's for more future proofing.

Sure, buy like the Infinity cache is for all RDNA2 GPUs, I expect the V-cache to act and be the same, I don't see why it cannot be...

Also for my case with a B450 MB and ryzen 3600 I'm very much interested in Zen3+ because I expect it to be the last available on my MB (even if unofficial support). So it will be the best upgrade for me.

As much as I root for Zen4 and hope it beats Intel, I'm not going for it, because I don't like to be an early adopter of new gens and I don't want to buy a new MB and RAM too.

So yeah Zen3+ is more important for me personally.

No fanboy, but Intel isn't and doesn't need to make any 'comeback'. They are still a world leader in semiconductors and have the profit reports to prove it. If anything they continue to solidify their dominance even when the competition's technology outpaces them at times. When their progress goes stagnant, their marketing and installed base maintain high margins. If their foray into the discrete graphics market is even moderately successful, it will put much needed pressure on both amd and nvidia.

One could argue the comeback is strictly technical, not financial.

But if they don't make the technical comeback soon, they will feel it financially too. It's not like they can keep letting AMD be better than them 5 more years without major negative consequences...

So yeah, Intel needs to make a technical comeback and a mindshare comeback too. I would say the mindshare one is even harder to achieve, as far as I'm concerned, they need to be better at everything compared to as of now and since years ago. They need good products, good prices and showing that they care a little about us customers before I give Intel my money again.

I'll give just one (there are many) examples how AMD won my "mindshare": they made AM4 available for 5 CPU generations (including Zen3+) and the upgrade path is incredible. When did intel do something like that?

So yeah, Intel needs to make a comaback in many ways. I don't care how much money they have, the same as I don't care how much money MS has, I still choose Sony and PS games over them til this day. They are better.

 

[cliffordcooley]

One could argue the comeback is strictly technical, not financial.

But if they don't make the technical comeback soon, they will feel it financially too. It's not like they can keep letting AMD be better than them 5 more years without major negative consequences...

No but the longer AMD can manage to stay on top technically. The closer they get to a competitive balance in both technical, and financial. It's a balance that we have always needed.

Signed: An Intel Guy

 

[wiyosaya]

Won’t be long now until the 5000 series from AMD faces it’s first real challenger. So far it’s only had to deal with competition using a significantly larger process node.

I just hope that when Intel inevitably decapitates AMD’s 5000 series that AMD bounce back. When Bulldozer launched and flopped 10 years ago it took AMD 7 years to produce a new architecture and it was the users who suffered because of this.

Just when will that "when" be? When the 5000 series is old and gray and has been superseded by two or three more generations of Zen?

 

[wiyosaya]

No but the longer AMD can manage to stay on top technically. The closer they get to a competitive balance in both technical, and financial. It's a balance that we have always needed.

Signed: An Intel Guy

AMD has been gaining for a while now. I think a market where Intel needs to be wary of AMD is the server market.

 

[wiyosaya]

From a market share standpoint, this is true. But from a reputation standpoint, they need to work on reinforcing it. Don't get me wrong, Intel is still a very reputable company,

I think Intel has done much to earn a really bad reputation in the enthusiast and other markets with not so spectacular gains generation over generation and with strong arm business tactics. IMO, that "reputation" is a bruised eye that they can only dress up with makeup at this point, and is something that they definitely need to improve on.

 

[wiyosaya]

Sure, buy like the Infinity cache is for all RDNA2 GPUs, I expect the V-cache to act and be the same, I don't see why it cannot be...

Also for my case with a B450 MB and ryzen 3600 I'm very much interested in Zen3+ because I expect it to be the last available on my MB (even if unofficial support). So it will be the best upgrade for me.

As much as I root for Zen4 and hope it beats Intel, I'm not going for it, because I don't like to be an early adopter of new gens and I don't want to buy a new MB and RAM too.

I'm waiting to make a new build for myself specifically because of the new socket coming out. As a "new adopter" at that point, I expect quite a bit of flexibility for the future upgrade path.

I did, however, build a 3000 series PC for my wife on an X570 MB - which still has plenty of upgrade options.

So yeah Zen3+ is more important for me personally.

One could argue the comeback is strictly technical, not financial.

But if they don't make the technical comeback soon, they will feel it financially too. It's not like they can keep letting AMD be better than them 5 more years without major negative consequences...

So yeah, Intel needs to make a technical comeback and a mindshare comeback too. I would say the mindshare one is even harder to achieve, as far as I'm concerned, they need to be better at everything compared to as of now and since years ago. They need good products, good prices and showing that they care a little about us customers before I give Intel my money again.

Intel caring about customers is, IMO, as of yet, an oxymoron. As I see it, they are still in denial resulting from their "we are the champions hubris." I worked for a company that shrunk beyond belief, Kodak, that had, IMO, a hubris problem much like Intel's and look where Kodak is now.

I'll give just one (there are many) examples how AMD won my "mindshare": they made AM4 available for 5 CPU generations (including Zen3+) and the upgrade path is incredible. When did intel do something like that?

It has been a long time since intel went beyond two generations of MBs, and is one of the reasons that my next build will not be Intel.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well that didn't take long (only forever).

 

[Kosmoz]

No but the longer AMD can manage to stay on top technically. The closer they get to a competitive balance in both technical, and financial. It's a balance that we have always needed.

Signed: An Intel Guy

And I agree with that, I was just pointing the POV of Intel.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Hmmm. EVO branding?? I wonder if Samsung will have anything to say about that?

Or Mitsubishi for that matter!

 

[Avro Arrow]

It will be no decapitation this time, Alder Lake will barely beat Zen3 (maybe not even across the board) and Zen3+(3D) will come after a couple of months only (Q4 2021) and if not outright retake the lead, it will at least equalize the situation.

In 2022 Zen4 then will "decapitate" Alder Lake and only from 2023 onward intel fanbois can expect a better Intel presence or an actual win, although AMD will not stop either.

Decapitate??? Don't you just LOVE the terms that clueless fanboys use? I've never seen a head on a CPU before. I wonder if he took this literally:

Personal narratives (aka: fanfic) are fun!

Well, in all fairness, Shad's the one who started with the delusional fanboy language. Kosmoz just showed him how absurd the use of the word "decapitate" was when referring to CPUs.

Although, it it's true, I could be coaxed into giving Intel a little, but very loud, cheer. "Intel, Intel, what's your plan? If you can't do it no one can!"

I can understand this but I want the two companies to become much more similar in size before I'll cheer for Chipzilla to do anything but fail. They've already started their BS by having Dell try to sell their CPUs for them. I saw a Dell commercial that said "Remember to ask for an Intel CPU in your new Dell computer!" and it made me sick.

It will be good to see Intel bounce back to being the process leader. TSMC has too much on their hands ATM. We need the competition. I had been routing for AMD pre Ryzen days and switched from an i7 6700 to an 8 core Ryzen just because it was a good competitor. I've being staying with AM4 ever since.
Now with Alder Lake up to 16 cores it looks Intel is finally waking back up. Am hoping it will be good enough to compel me to switch back to Intel

You didn't wait long enough because the size disparity between Intel and AMD means that Intel can still pull the same crap that they did before and cripple AMD again. The amount of money that they made off of what they did easily dwarfed what they were fined and had to pay AMD. Cheer for Intel at your own risk and chagrin because they still want to eliminate AMD and have already proven the lengths to which they'll go to do that. I personally hate that company and always will because they're never going to change. In their darkest years, AMD's CPUs still worked fine for 99% of people so I really don't care where Intel is on the list, I'll stick with AMD.

9% drop in data center revenue... That's so bad. Honestly watch this space AMD is going to be the data centers number one choice over the next few years due to cost per core.

Yep and it gets worse for Intel in that space because AMD EPYC CPUs based on the new Genoa architecture are going to have up to 128 CORES EACH! Intel was getting absolutely crushed when the top EPYCs were only half of that:

It depends in Zen3+ comes to all the range. It may only come to 5900/5950. But I would still wait for Zen4, I'm in no rush to update my Zen1 1700X and would rather wait for AM5 MB's for more future proofing.

I couldn't agree more. I have an X570 motherboard and that's the last AM4 mobo that I'll ever buy.

In my opinion, it is not just a fab disadvantage that Intel is facing, but also from their exising CPU architecture as well. Evident when you compare an 8 core Rocket Lake vs 8 core Zen 3 CPU. While Rocket Lake would have been more potent with a comparable 10nm, but early 10nm don't clock well (consider the low clockspeed on Ice Lake U), and Intel obviously are not as competitive in multicore performance. It is not until Tiger Lake that managed to close that gap, but with a higher power requirement to push clockspeed.

As bad as that is, it's mostly semantics because AMD's attention is on the server space and EPYC is now steamrolling Xeon worse than Xeon EVER steamrolled Opteron. Imagine what a motherboard with twin 128-core, 256-thread Genoa-based EPYC CPUs would do to the best that Intel can muster.

To do that, we have to consider just how badly EPYC's performance:watt ratio and overall performance are just blowing Xeon clear out of the water right now. That's with CPUs that top out with "only" 64-cores and 128 threads each (I have to say "only" for a 64-core, 128-thread CPU and that's awsome )! The 128-core, 256-thread EPYC server CPU will absolutely mind-blowing when it comes to not only throughput capability but also power savings by virtue of having more cores in one chip. The server space is the most critical space where AMD needs to gain at least parity with Intel.

The way things are going, AMD is going to surpass Intel by a country mile.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Well, in all fairness, Shad's the one who started with the delusional fanboy language. Kosmoz just showed him how absurd the use of the word "decapitate" was when referring to CPUs.

I agree, I was too hard on @Kosmoz as he was just reusing the ridiculous "decapitate" to make a point. My mistake.

 

[Adi6293]

Sure, buy like the Infinity cache is for all RDNA2 GPUs, I expect the V-cache to act and be the same, I don't see why it cannot be...

Also for my case with a B450 MB and ryzen 3600 I'm very much interested in Zen3+ because I expect it to be the last available on my MB (even if unofficial support). So it will be the best upgrade for me.

As much as I root for Zen4 and hope it beats Intel, I'm not going for it, because I don't like to be an early adopter of new gens and I don't want to buy a new MB and RAM too.

So yeah Zen3+ is more important for me personally.

One could argue the comeback is strictly technical, not financial.

But if they don't make the technical comeback soon, they will feel it financially too. It's not like they can keep letting AMD be better than them 5 more years without major negative consequences...

So yeah, Intel needs to make a technical comeback and a mindshare comeback too. I would say the mindshare one is even harder to achieve, as far as I'm concerned, they need to be better at everything compared to as of now and since years ago. They need good products, good prices and showing that they care a little about us customers before I give Intel my money again.

I'll give just one (there are many) examples how AMD won my "mindshare": they made AM4 available for 5 CPU generations (including Zen3+) and the upgrade path is incredible. When did intel do something like that?

So yeah, Intel needs to make a comaback in many ways. I don't care how much money they have, the same as I don't care how much money MS has, I still choose Sony and PS games over them til this day. They are better.

I don't want to burst your bubble here but is Zen 3+ definitely going to work on 400 series of motherboards? They already tried to drop it for Zen 3 remember? Now its going to be a year later so they would be justified in dropping 400 series in eyes of most people

 

[Avro Arrow]

I agree, I was too hard on @Kosmoz as he was just reusing the ridiculous "decapitate" to make a point. My mistake.

We all make 'em but only the intelligent and honourable of us readily admit it.

Cheers to you!

 

[Kosmoz]

I don't want to burst your bubble here but is Zen 3+ definitely going to work on 400 series of motherboards? They already tried to drop it for Zen 3 remember? Now its going to be a year later so they would be justified in dropping 400 series in eyes of most people

No one can say for sure, of course, but I believe even in some unofficial capacity it will work, if not outright official.

Zen3 works on 300 series, unofficially...