You are currently viewing SemiWiki as a guest which gives you limited access to the site. To view blog comments and experience other SemiWiki features you must be a registered member. Registration is fast, simple, and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
I saw this post on X, and was curious how Power11 is achieving such a significant increase in density over Power 10, with both (in theory) being on the same Samsung 7nm node? Clock speeds are actually up a bit, so I'm thinking this isn't a HD vs HP library situation..
Power11: 45,9 MTr/mm²...
I finally finished Andy Grove's book "Only the Paranoid Survive". It was enlightening to me when it talked about Intel's culture around constructive criticism and providing forums for challenging ideas. I'm not sure how it was in practice as I never worked there - but some aspects of Intel's...
AMD has recently added 2 more processors to it's "AMD Ryzen Z2 Series" -- a high end "AI Z2 Extreme", and a "Z2 A".
The Ryzen Z2 series now has 5 SKUs with 4 generations of Zen cores. This single branding also includes 3 different generation of GPU: RDNA2, RDNA3, and RDNA 3.5 (RDNA3 with...
What would be the approaches to providing future Luna or Martian settlements with the ability to fabricate their own chips?
I recognize the current semiconductor supply chain is insanely complex - from materials to logistics, technology, etc.. But I think for humanity to be able to survive...
Intel draws a line in the sand to boost gross margins — new products must deliver 50% gross profit to get the green light
Lip-Bu Tan is "laser-focused" on getting Intel back to maximizing shareholder value
Intel will not be entertaining any projects that do not promise to double its money going...
Intel Israel says purchase order fraud ran undetected for over a year.
Intel Israel has filed a lawsuit in the Haifa District Court alleging a sophisticated embezzlement scheme totaling over NIS 3 million (over $840,000). The complaint targets Natalia Avtsin, a former employee in the company's...
I found an interesting-sounding thread on ASML's software stack, below.
I suspect the sheer complexity of EUV devices and 40+ years of development at ASML is going to need a similarly elaborate supporting software stack. I also imagine ASML has some customer centric requirements driving their...
Intel has announced significantly higher fabric (and memory) clocks as "supported under warranty" for Arrow Lake-S. Intel apparently had extremely conservative margins on the inter-tile/chiplet fabric speed and has now updated supported frequency accordingly:
Another site shows overall main...
I was curious if anything "pioneered" in Itanium later got re-used or folded into x86 technical design that had a meaningful impact on improving x86? (IP, techniques, etc.)
As an example -- the Pentium 4 had a really strong branch predictor, and a trace cache that were later re-used or...
Qualcomm has accused its longtime partner, Arm Holdings, of unfair business practices, taking the matter to U.S., Europe, and South Korea regulators. The allegations claim that Arm limits access to its technologies and changes licensing models in a bid to harm competition, according to...
Modern x86 cores can still run/do a lot of things that are no longer really needed for the vast majority of computing. Examples include 16-bit x86 code, legacy BIOS/boot methods, obsolete memory protection schemes, etc. I presume these items are replicated across all cores in a modern...
I just noticed the Intel ARK sheet for Core Ultra 7 265U says the lithography is "Intel 3" :
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241860/intel-core-ultra-7-processor-255u-12m-cache-up-to-5-20-ghz/specifications.html
Which compares to the 285K saying "TSMC N3B"...
AI LLMs are mostly bandwidth limited; would Optane DIMMS have potentially been a good way to lower the cost to run larger LLMs locally? (Typically requiring 768+GB of ram). Would the latency have been too high?
I couldn't help but notice lately that AI advancement reminds me of the late 1970s through early 1990s era of 8-bit and 16-bit computing.
- There are a lot of AI competitors, without a crystal clear future winner
- Developers are still early learning how to get the most out of a given hardware...
While modern CPUs seem to be usually good to operate 89C, 95C, 100C, or even a bit hotter. Some GPUs are even good to 110C while years ago the limits were typically 90C.
However, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s CPU max temps were often specified to much lower numbers - 70C being...
An excellent historical piece from Asianometry:
Some interesting tidbits:
- Some detail about Andy Grove's retirement (and his leadership) - "he was tired".
- Craig Barretts tenure and his (mostly failed) strategy around growing Intel into (tele)communications (perhaps this failure made...
I just watched a Jim Keller interview (from about 6 months ago) where described co-founding Atomic Semi with Sam Zeloof -- the individual who "constructed a home microchip fabrication facility in his parents' garage"[in 2018, at age 17], and actually fabbed some chips with (old) tech. (I...
Yesterday, it was reported that the US Department of Commerce is investigating the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) over suspicions that the chipmaker may have been subverting 5G export controls to make "artificial intelligence or smartphone chips for the Chinese tech giant Huawei...
A buddy sent me this article: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article293265924.html
"
The town is home to the purest quartz on the planet, a byproduct of continental formations that occurred more than 380 million years ago. High-purity quartz is essential to making the silicon...
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/intel-confirms-dollar3-billion-award-for-secure-enclave-18a-chips-coming-to-us-military
Intel is set to receive up to $3 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act for the Secure Enclave program from the U.S. government, which is $500...
