[atty]

To be fair, as I understand it, feature density of Intel 7 nm is more like TSMC 5 nm, from what I have read. Also, I think they took a risk with switching to a chiplet design, and it paid off big for them. Not sure who was in charge of design was when they laid out that roadmap, but whoever it was, and Lisa Su and the upper management, get some kudos for that. Of course, it’s quite possible that move could have failed and we’d be laughing at them just like we did for the bulldozer architecture, so maybe they just got lucky :)

But I do agree, all these comparisons we’ve seen between Intel 14 and TSMC 7 have been… less than helpful for comparing technology. Good for end users making purchasing decisions, of course.

[IntelMiner]

"we’d be laughing at them just like we did for the bulldozer architecture"

I remember buying the Phenom II X6 1100T day one (December 2010) because we were all waiting for AMD to rise like a phoenix and dethrone Intel's incredible Core series chips

10 months later (October 2011) Bulldozer finally launched, before crashing and burning on the launch pad almost immediately

It was a hard time being an AMD fan a decade ago :(

[rincebrain]

Hey, I too bought an 1100T before Bulldozer launched, and it gave me many years of great service.

Unfortunately, I needed to replace that server before Zen showed up, so the next iteration was (and is) an Intel chip. (Slightly tempted to upgrade it again ~soon, but not impressed by Intel's current "lower-power" Xeon designs, AMD's Epyc Embedded last had an iteration in Zen 1 and according to leaks won't see a new one until 2023(!) and Zen 4, and AArch64 is not bad but I haven't seen anyone selling a server board that was in the right spot between size/power/performance/price yet...)

[kolbusa]

Off topic here, but it was probably Jim Keller who contributed to Intel doing chiplets. Looked like one of the few sane persons in the leadership when I worked there.

[atty]

As an interested outsider (no connections or technical expertise), it seems like Keller’s tenure at a company very frequently coincides with very successful products being developed. Is that the view from inside the field as well? Is it seen as a bit of a coincidence, or is he really that good of a technical leader?

[MangoCoffee]

>feature density of Intel 7 nm is more like TSMC 5 nm

yes but Intel announced 7nm delay while TSMC 5nm is in production and 3nm in risk production. Intel is behind.

[atty]

Oh yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest Intel is ahead, I was more suggesting that chips built on Intel 7 nm and TSMC 7 nm were not really directly comparable on the technology side. Of course for an end user it doesn’t really matter what causes the performance, but we were talking more about comparing the architectures.