[HN Gopher] Intel shows off 8-core, 528-thread processor with 1T...
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       Intel shows off 8-core, 528-thread processor with 1TB/s of co-
       packaged optics
        
       Author : LinuxBender
       Score  : 63 points
       Date   : 2023-09-01 12:05 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | meepmorp wrote:
       | In case anyone missed towards the bottom of the article:
       | 
       | > These design considerations drove the team to develop this
       | experimental processor, which TSMC builds using its 7nm FinFET
       | process (in case you didn't know, Intel fabs a lot of non-CPU
       | products at TSMC and has for years) and which features eight
       | cores each with 66 threads.
        
       | 0xDEF wrote:
       | Is Intel finally back on track? There were some rumors that
       | Nvidia is considering to use Intel fabs.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | beebeepka wrote:
         | They are rumoured to have booked the first EXE (latest and
         | greatest) machines from ASML. If that's true, then yeah, even
         | Apple might go back eventually. Just for the fabs, of course.
         | Not use Intel CPUs. I believe this is what Gelsinger meant when
         | he said he would like to win Apple back
        
           | PedroBatista wrote:
           | I really hope Gelsinger used that as an expression, not a
           | real goal or strategy.
           | 
           | Apple using an Apple chip, given the recent past and
           | circumstances is both a technical and a political move. Going
           | back to Intel ( or AMD ) would be an humiliation and Apple's
           | track-record dealing with inferior products has been
           | basically ignore the problems and put their spin machine to
           | use.
           | 
           | I hope Intel gets better but I also hope they don't get much
           | better than anyone else because the last time that happened
           | their arrogance and anti-competitive moves were so bad even
           | their most "loyal" corporate customers HATED them with a
           | passion.
        
       | Figs wrote:
       | Related discussion from a few days ago:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37315802
        
       | nvm0n2 wrote:
       | I wonder how good this sort of chip would be for (parallel
       | capable) compilers. They have lots of branchy cache-missy sort of
       | code and can often scale up to a lot of threads if they're
       | compiling a big problem.
        
         | convolvatron wrote:
         | potentially...really good?
         | 
         | however there are lots of pitfalls. if your thread creation and
         | teardown is expensive, then that limits the grain to which you
         | can apply threading (Amdahl). if synchronization is expensive
         | then you have a similar problem (that potentially gets worse
         | with contention).
         | 
         | one of the big problems is exactly _how_ to map threads to
         | workloads. you don't want to leave idle resources on the
         | ground, but its also very counterproductive to generate a
         | massive work queue.
         | 
         | there are also limits - memory transaction concurrency and
         | memory bandwidth, and the costs and contention of going off
         | chip.
         | 
         | cache coherency, while it seems nice from a programming model
         | perspective, can also really limit how much concurrency you can
         | exploit.
         | 
         | I know there are others here that can add to this list.
        
       | ftxbro wrote:
       | This intel one is 7nm and apple bought every 3nm capacity this
       | year. I feel like apple is beating intel on chips.
        
         | RandomBK wrote:
         | This isn't a production unit, but a research project to play
         | with silicon photonics.
        
         | Almondsetat wrote:
         | TSMC is beating Intel on chips*
        
           | littlestymaar wrote:
           | Yeah, also "7nm" and "3nm" aren't actually measuring the same
           | thing (IIRC Intel 7nm is equivalent to TSMC 5nm)
        
             | ftxbro wrote:
             | well if the measurements are only marketing words now, then
             | intel should just measure something else and say that they
             | have 2nm
        
               | peyton wrote:
               | Yeah kinda, they basically did a rebrand recently.
        
               | avianlyric wrote:
               | That's exactly what Intel are planning to do
               | 
               | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/intels-foundry-
               | roadm...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | bryanlarsen wrote:
         | Intel 7nm and TSMC 3nm are roughly equivalent, they both have a
         | transistor density of 200 - 250 MTr/mm2.
        
           | tux3 wrote:
           | No, there is no Intel 7nm anymore, it was renamed to Intel 4.
           | But there is instead an Intel 7, which is the previous Intel
           | 10nm ESF.
           | 
           | This marks the point where they changed their naming scheme,
           | so that Intel 7 is roughly comparable to TSMC N7 (not to TSMC
           | N3, which would be Intel 4).
           | 
           | And this chip is on TSMC 7nm per the article, not Intel 7 or
           | Intel 4 (the former "7nm").
        
         | meepmorp wrote:
         | Apple only had 90% of TSMC's 3nm capacity this year, with Intel
         | contracted for the other 10. They had delays, so TSMC is
         | producing fewer wafers.
         | 
         | Edit - per the article, this chip is actually fabbed by TSMC on
         | their nm process.
        
           | monocasa wrote:
           | That was the rumor, but there's more recently been reports
           | that Apple has taken up all 3nm capacity.
           | 
           | https://www.extremetech.com/computing/apple-bought-all-of-
           | ts...
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-02 23:00 UTC)