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Intel Finds Moore's Law's Next Step At 10 Nanometers (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Sometime in 2017, Intel will ship the first processors built using the company's new, 10-nanometer chip-manufacturing technology. Intel says transistors produced in this way will be cheaper than those that came before, continuing the decades-long trend at the heart of Moore's Law -- and contradicting widespread talk that transistor-production costs have already sunk as low as they will go.
In the coming years, Intel plans to make further improvements to the design of these transistors. And, for the first time, the company will optimize its manufacturing technology to accommodate other companies that wish to use Intel's facilities to produce chips based on ARM architecture, which is nearly ubiquitous in modern mobile processors.
In the coming years, Intel plans to make further improvements to the design of these transistors. And, for the first time, the company will optimize its manufacturing technology to accommodate other companies that wish to use Intel's facilities to produce chips based on ARM architecture, which is nearly ubiquitous in modern mobile processors.
One cannot imagine how freaking tired I am of hearing about Moore's Law - there's no law, there's never been one. There was a mere observation that the number of transistors doubled every 18 months or so.
Whoever decided to call this observation a law must forever be held up to shame. And the ones who keep repeating this nonsense.
Moore's Law isn't dead, that's why Intel already has the 3rd 14nm CPU family and is planning another one, Coffee Lake, in 14 nm before moving on to 10nm.
Intel isn't making 4 different CPU families on 14nm cause the process works so well and is so cheap.
First 14nm, Broadwell, was released 2014, released abysmally late and very underperforming, and the first 10nm is expected to be released 1h 2018. They may sample a few trial wafers in 2017, but there won't be a chip sold. 4 years is not what Moore's Law promised back then, and the Tick-Tock model is totally dead and buried as well.
This IEEE Spectrum rag sounds worse like Popular Mechanic with that much paid cheerleading bullshit.
That's what a scientific law is: a relation between measured observations. It can be purely empirical.
There's a law for centrifugal force, and it isn't even a real force!
Thanks to "trusted computing" and all the other innovation and backdoors they've brought to chips, I don't want a new intel processor anymore.
In technology, 14-20 years is effectively 100 years. Technology is old news in 5 years and almost useless in 10 years. Since we're talking about CPU companies, let me know how competitive a 14 year old CPU is. Patents are great for innovative breakthroughs. They are bad for evolutionary next steps. Instead of making lots of quick steps and evolving technology quickly, create artificial gaps between each step and slow things down.
Let's assert this is uniformly true.
So let's say we reduce the patent term to 2.5 years so it's not old news. After 2.5 years, you can do whatever you like with any invention.
This, in turn, means that the time the creator has to recoup their inventing costs is 2.5 years; no longer. Because after that, a competitor will enter the market having spent nothing to get where the creator spent all that money.
This will considerably reduce the amount that can be spent on new inventions without losing one's shirt; and that, in turn, will severely retard the advance of the very technologies you are so eager to get for free.
But there's more, and if anything, it's worse. Here 'tis: While no consumer is very likely to wait 20 years to get their hands on something, two to three years? That's not unthinkable at all. I kept my last phone five years. I've kept my computer eight years. So what happens here is that the market for the initial product, at the higher price that has to pay for the development costs, over the shorter period of time, will shrink, because the consumers will be thinking "if I just wait a couple years, this will be much less expensive." And not because initial high prices have defrayed the development costs; no, this is because for the me-too manufacturers, there are no development costs. So what you end up with is even less recovery of development costs.
While I'm with you in that development is hard, and in tech, it's fast, the problem is it is expensive, and if you want the money spent to do the development in a capitalist economy, then something like the patent system has to be in place.
If you think we can somehow transition the US from capitalism to... something that sees that all development efforts are fully funded and everyone gets to benefit... well, let's just say I don't see it anywhere on the horizon and leave it at that.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Go Google AMD Zen aka Ryzen. Intel has a worthy competitor if true? It's not out yet but was demoed last week beating an Intel broadwell 8 core CPU :-)
Also I am 40. In my 20s AMD made superior x86 chips over Intel! No you did not misread that? Google slashdot pentium IV vs AthlonXP from early last decade for a laugh? The pentium IV sucked! It was hot and single core and had inferior performance over the AthlonXP. AMD also invented 64 bit computing for x86. Intel wanted the horrible Itanic proprietary Mercedes to replace x86. Intel crippled the pentium IV making it just 32 bits and trolled the virtues of lWisc or whatever funny architecture it was for servers.
Thanks AMD for saving x86 and bring us 64 bit computing to mere mortals outside of MDF rooms. Now go kick Intel's ass again?
PS I still support Intel as my virtualization stuff is tuned for their chip. In 2 years that may change with KMS and Hyper-V supporting Ryzen if they hit it big
http://saveie6.com/
This tends to follow typical trends of "industry leader" vs "also-ran". What would an industry leader have to gain by establishing well-defined standards? In contrast, standards are critical for the also-rans to compete.
Don't think for a minute that AMD wouldn't do the same were they in Intel's shoes. They play nicer because they're the underdog right now.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.