Comment on Intel's CPUs Are Failing, ft. Wendell of Level1 Techs

• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That depends on what you mean, but here are a few reasonable explanations:

  • Intel’s chips are still on their Intel 7 process (similar to TSMC’s 7nm process), whereas AMD is using TSMC’s 4nm process, so AMD’s CPUs are 2 nodes ahead; smaller process generally means more transistors in the same area, as well as lower power usage per clock
  • AMD’s chiplet architecture makes it easier for them to move the CPU bits to a smaller arch, and the IO bits can stay on a cheaper arch (e.g. AMD uses 4nm for the cores, 6nm for the IO die); this increases yields and dramatically reduces costs, so AMD can invest more in architectural improvements
  • ARM prioritizes battery life over performance, so performance per watt won’t be great at the high end, but it’ll probably win at the low end; they also don’t make their own chips (just designs), so comparing process nodes is meaningless
  • AMD focuses on different aspects of computing than either Intel or ARM, so perhaps they’ve just done a better job optimizing for what you care about

  Anyway, that’s my take.

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  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And for AMD’s 3D v-cache chips, there’s an enormous energy benefit, as taking stuff from the (much larger) cache is far more energy efficient than constantly going back and forwards to RAM.

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  • bruhduh@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Thank you for detailed explanation

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  • sauce@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Correction, meteor lake’s (Intel 14th gen) CPU tile is on the Intel 4 process (though admittedly that’s a 7nm euv process). And they’ve also moved to a chiplet design. (CPU, GPU and IO are on 3 different processes)

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