Inside Intel

z71offroad writes: "There is a really interesting article at Anandtech right now showing what goes on inside Intel Labs. Although it doesnt break any NDAs, it is still a facinating look at what goes on inside the chip giant's labs."

Comments

Intel's approach

[drink85cent]

I think Intel does need to jump off it's approach to sales by clock speed.

Maybe instead of constantly worrying about clock speeds they spend more research into being able to add larger amounts of cache or try to achieve one clock cycle access to main memory

Yes chips will most likely continue to follow moore's law but computers are not much faster now than 2 years ago

what their worries should be

• Improve memory speed
• Make instruction set more efficient (ie make alu more efficient, the intel is no RISC)
• reduce production costs

Re:Intel's approach

[Rebel Patriot]

I agree. The reason the Athlon proccesors are so much faster in benchmarks isn't the clock-speed, but the memory bottle-neck. Athlon's run with half the level2 cache yet they still are faster. Why? 233 MHz front-side bus speed.

Re:Intel's approach

[WetCat]

... and return to olde yet golde approach: Intel 80686... intel 80786 ... intel 80986 ... intel 801086...

Seriously, I liked that approach!

I was somewhat disappointed, with the article

[heideggier]

For an article that promised to show the inner working of how Intel makes chips, I disliked that they seemed to ignore the actual constuction of the products themselves. I got the impression that the article only wished to show how intel designed chips.

Mostly the article seemed to run like the following, well we met some real cool guys in a lab in oregon who research all the new stuff, then we followed all the production to the guy's who QC the design at some other lab somewhere. While trying not to break a NDA

I thought this was a bit like going to Nike and just interviewing the guy who made the prototype for the new gel heel. Or Ford and interviewing the guy who made the new concept Focus while ignoring everyone from Detroit

Not that am trying to troll, I just wanted some interviews with the average workers at their Indonesian fab plant, maybe finding out how what kewl shit they suppy to their employees. I heard that one plant had a fully working video parlor for instance, and that intel had helped to setup schools in the local area (although this is prob marketing BS). Also, rumour has it that people who work there are all closet overclocking freak's since the price of the chips themselves are so low.

I also thought that it might be interesting to see the who hugh some of these factories have become, that in some cases they are as large as small cities, with entire regions depending on there income.

Throw, in some interesting facts like, most of the chinese in indonesia are not normal chinese but rather Hacka, or chinese gypsies who moved to the country due to persecution on the mainland.

Things like that, together with reports from the labs, would have made a much more interesting article IMHO.

Inside Intel...

[BLAG-blast]

Hey,

Let's not forget to take a complete look inside intel..., not just at there technology.

FaceIntel.com

Nice company.... NOT!