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Comment by pseudosavant | Hacker News Reader

It seems insane to me that Intel won't have 7nm fabs working at scale until 2023 but AMD is selling $99 CPUs printed at 7nm already.

How did Intel go from 24 months ahead of everyone to 4 years behind??

The most advanced process node was arguably Intel's only true differentiator in the past. Now they make CPUs with comparable IPC to ARM or AMD but they have to use old process tech. And they are only getting further behind.

How smart was it for AMD to spin out their fabs into GlobalFoundaries? After all 7nm Ryzen is done by TSMC.

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Because it’s not the same thing sigh. It’s an apples to oranges comparison. I wish they stuck to actual transistor sizes.

Intel 7 is fab 5; tsmc and samsung already have that ready to go.

Both are brand names at this point.

Does the transistor size matter when AMD chips are more energy efficient? That’s what I really care about.

Yes, absolutely. That is one of the big reasons why AMD is beating Intel on that front.

You are correct though the exact numbers don't matter. Intel is already behind and is having problems where as other manufacturers are moving to smaller nodes. Exact node size does not matter just the fact that Intel is being left behind

Is there a good resource where you can look up the transistor size, transistors / mm2 or something similar, for each popular process?

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process

No matter how you compare the sizes, in 2023 Intel will be far behind anyway. TSMC will start 3nm next year and beat Intel to death.

They are behind, but that is mischaracterizing it a good deal. Intel's 10nm is more equivalent to TSMC's 7nm.

It's just like, back in the 2000's, Intel insisting GHz was the only measure that mattered (compared to AMD's lower clocked but more efficient designs), but in the other way around.

Maybe so, but Intel's 10nm keeps slipping back[1] whereas TSMC have been shipping 7nm in volume since 2018.

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-says-first-10nm-desk...

Agreed - but that has also not been smooth. I'd be curious to know the 10nm volumes at TSMC vs intel. The world has really changed.

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