Hacker News Reader

Comment by wtallis | Hacker News Reader

I think the comment was about competing foundries, which are mostly using their leading-edge processes to manufacture chips that aren't going head to head with Intel's desktop and server CPUs. Instead, they're making smartphone SoCs and GPUs.

View on HN

Intel produces 10nm mobile CPUs which corresponds to 7nm process of other manufacturers. And their 14nm desktop or server CPUs are still the best ones (in terms of pure performance). I'm sure that they are working on next generation CPUs. I don't see them being behind.

> Intel produces 10nm mobile CPUs

Those aren't mobile CPUs in the sense of being anywhere close to something that could power a smartphone or even a tablet. They're barely-functional desktop chips with large portions of the chip turned off and the rest down-clocked to small laptop power levels. And it's only one SKU so far, with extremely limited availability; mass production is currently scheduled for next year.

Intel's actual low-power microarchitecture is still on 14nm and can barely get its foot in the door for the tablet market. Meanwhile, two generations of smartphones have shipped using TSMC and Samsung 10nm SoCs, and TSMC's 7nm has started volume production.

And an N/A price on ARK. It's a disaster for only a 70mm^2 sized die. The no iGPU for a laptop CPU is almost a meme, and 2.2GHz (with only 3.1 turbo) dual-core at 15W just makes it even worse.

>"Intel produces 10nm mobile CPUs which corresponds to 7nm process of other manufacturers."

Can you say what's the reason for this differential?

The node sizes listed aren't consistent. There's no standard, so 10nm for Intel isn't 10nm for TSMC. It doesn't mean that the transistors are 10nm,just the smallest feature. Since everyone measures this differently, it's effectively just a marketing number.

From reading these threads previously, the answer is generally 'marketing'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com