Intel's 45nm Patch Machinery Exposed

Roboticles writes "Tweakers.net paid a visit to Intel's laboratories in the California town of Folsom, the birthplace of the 45nm CPU. We spoke to lead architect Stephen Fisher about the development of the Penryn chip and the day the first A0 version arrived. We were shown the machinery used to test and patch the 45nm processor, which is currently being manufactured in Arizona for release next month."

Comments

TickTock

[WPIDalamar]

I thought the "TickTock" process of developing a technology two different ways was a really neat innovation. Few businesses would dare double their research just to reduce their risks. I wonder if a similar method is used in other industries.

Imagine if Microsoft did it? Maybe we wouldn't end up with things like ME or Vista :)

I wonder if there's a competitive spirit between the teams.

Re:TickTock

[Targon]

This has been used across the entire industry, just without a cute catch-phrase for it, and without pushing for this quick an improvement to process technology.

Think about it, you would see the overall design come out, then that same design would be released on an improved process(going from 90 to 65nm for example). The design would be the same, just an improved process that would allow for faster versions of that design.

AMD has done it as well to an extent, but the high-end processors in the K8 generation are still on 90nm while the lower-clocked chips are at 65nm. Intel has more resources, so can throw more resources at fab process improvements while keeping the same number of resources focused on the overall CPU design.

Now, there are some disadvantages to Intel's method of approaching CPU innovation, including not looking for other ways to improve system performance. Think about it, AMD was able to do well due to the integrated memory controller and HyperTransport with a much smaller amount of cache. Even with these elements, will Intel come out with anything really NEW that will improve overall system performance?

So, Intel may hold the lead in terms of performance, or the AMD K10 architecture may allow AMD to catch back up. Either of these are possibilities at this point, and AMD is also working on things like adding some GPU functionality to their processors(Fusion being the first example of this). Even if the GPU power on the CPU is limited in terms of performance, it may add to the graphics processing power of an add-in video card to give an edge in terms of performance. Sure, Intel may be the platform for those who run MS Office, but for those who want some graphics power, AMD may end up with a clear advantage.

Tick-Tock is just an Intel way of saying they will do the same thing they always have, just pushing out improvements faster. AMD is focused more on figuring out ways to do things better because they can't keep up in a straight MHz competition, or on a straight fab process competition.

Re:Long live..

[urcreepyneighbor]

"inefficiency and idiocy"

Yeah, it only conquered the world. :)

Re:Long live..

[pslam]

In non-benchmarks, it's a win because it's a compression for executable code.

It's only a win if your execution is bottlenecked by instruction bus bandwidth. That only happens if you're thrashing your L1 instruction cache, and THAT only happens with horribly bloated software and/or horribly small L1 caches.

While it's a good compression of executable code, it's good compression of x86 code. Other ISAs manage to pack way more into their instructions in the first place. Plus, the random alignment of x86 instructions means that the pipeline is elongated by a couple of stages just to find the start of them!

Sorry, but x86 being a nice compression is a half-truth. Other ISAs manage just fine being, for example, fixed 32 bits per instruction and massively benefit from the simpler design. They also tend to be roughly as compact as x86. If you really want to see a properly compressed ISA take a look at Thumb-2.