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LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

Fun Shoe
There's certainly niches. They can be good for high performance embedded sort of places, especially the tough ones. They're really cool to do an imac style minimal desktop, that again, can be very performant. The issue is that they're a weird balance of powerful performance usually not needed in embedded or IoT uses, but as above, not great for games.

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NewFatMike
Jun 11, 2015

shrike82 posted:

I have to wonder if there's any market for NUCs. My brother got a current gen one for casual gaming on the TV but gave up on it after realizing how anaemic its GPU capabilities were. He idly considered hooking up an eGPU to it but at that point, you're better off getting a normal desktop

At least it'll be able to Steam Remote Play essentially forever?

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

shrike82 posted:

I have to wonder if there's any market for NUCs.

If I could get an i3 version with dual NICs for $300ish it'd be a great option for doing a higher end firewall (break-and-inspect, gigabit speeds, VPN, etc). But I can't, so I ended up with some weirdo 5200U SFF....thing....that I can't even find a model number or manufacturer on anywhere, which admittedly is workout out great.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
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shrike82 posted:

I have to wonder if there's any market for NUCs. My brother got a current gen one for casual gaming on the TV but gave up on it after realizing how anaemic its GPU capabilities were. He idly considered hooking up an eGPU to it but at that point, you're better off getting a normal desktop

You have to modulate your expectations, it’s a laptop chip in a SBC form factor, it’s never gonna be as good as a desktop or engineered SFF PC with discrete GPUs and GDDR memory.

That said, Gemini Lake makes a nice HTPC thanks to its support for HDMI 2.0b and HEVC 10bit (which is Blu-ray 4K), there is nothing better considering you can pick them up in surplus condition for as little as $125 for a barebones (mine still had the plastic on them).

Tiger Lake has Xe graphics which is reasonably competent - from what I remember it’s between Picasso and Renoir tier, which is not bad at all, and there are titles where it wins against Renoir. It also adds Adaptive Sync support which is a biggie. And right now you can’t actually buy a NUC-style device with a Renoir, AMD has been really bad about providing adequate supply of their APUs, so it’s a bit of a comparison against a paper chip. Against the Picasso based devices which are actually getting made, Tiger Lake smokes them hard.

I think ice lake probably does as well and iirc it’s also got Xe graphics as well? But it’s slower across the board because it’s not super fin and clocks lower.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jan 18, 2021

movax
Aug 30, 2008

DrDork posted:

If I could get an i3 version with dual NICs for $300ish it'd be a great option for doing a higher end firewall (break-and-inspect, gigabit speeds, VPN, etc). But I can't, so I ended up with some weirdo 5200U SFF....thing....that I can't even find a model number or manufacturer on anywhere, which admittedly is workout out great.

Sounds like the ones Protectli sells (or Minisys on AliExpress) but it's a bit more than $300 to get something that isn't a Celeron.


Paul MaudDib posted:

You have to modulate your expectations, it’s a laptop chip in a SBC form factor, it’s never gonna be as good as a desktop or engineered SFF PC with discrete GPUs and GDDR memory.

That said, Gemini Lake makes a nice HTPC thanks to its support for HDMI 2.0b and HEVC 10bit (which is Blu-ray 4K), there is nothing better considering you can pick them up in surplus condition for as little as $125 for a barebones (mine still had the plastic on them).

Tiger Lake has Xe graphics which is reasonably competent - from what I remember it’s between Picasso and Renoir tier, which is not bad at all, and there are titles where it wins against Renoir. It also adds Adaptive Sync support which is a biggie. And right now you can’t actually buy a NUC-style device with a Renoir, AMD has been really bad about providing adequate supply of their APUs, so it’s a bit of a comparison against a paper chip. Against the Picasso based devices which are actually getting made, Tiger Lake smokes them hard.

I think ice lake probably does as well and iirc it’s also got Xe graphics as well? But it’s slower across the board because it’s not super fin and clocks lower.

Yeah, I'm curious to see how Xe benches in more detail on a NUC. Debating NUCing as a Plex server instead of a NAS w/ QuickSync/NVENC and at that point I might as well mount to back of TV and just plug right in and use it for all sorts of things — that's where the extra NIC would come in handy, and 2.5 GbE doesn't hurt there!

BlankSystemDaemon
Mar 13, 2009



Fair warning, some/most NUCs aren't completely silent when decoding video, even with libva/vaapi, which is meant to reduce the CPU usage.
The fan duty cycle is especially frustrating, because of the incredibly tight thermal envelope.

Threadkiller Dog
Jun 9, 2010
Been toying with the idea of turning my 9900k into a nuc or htpc whenever i retire it. Its on an ITX board already so with some heavy allcore downclocking and a cute litte case i dream it will be all shades of possible. The igpu should be good enough.

Just have to find an actual use case for it first :downs:

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

movax posted:

Sounds like the ones Protectli sells (or Minisys on AliExpress) but it's a bit more than $300 to get something that isn't a Celeron.

Protectli was actually who I was going to go with if I couldn't find something else workable. It's not one of their units--it's this guy that I've been unable to locate anywhere else.

Solid little unit, once I figured out that the installed 32GB SSD was dead and the whole thing needed a CMOS clear to un-gently caress some weird BIOS stuff it had going on.

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

BlankSystemDaemon posted:

Fair warning, some/most NUCs aren't completely silent when decoding video, even with libva/vaapi, which is meant to reduce the CPU usage.
The fan duty cycle is especially frustrating, because of the incredibly tight thermal envelope.

They use quite the small blower designs too and those can really howl.

We use a lot of the slightly larger but still small hp 400 mini/sff ones and they are a good combination of compact and reasonably powerful. They can just screw onto a VESA mount so it’s easy to mount them anyplace, under a shelf, the wall, whatever.

NewFatMike
Jun 11, 2015

Paul MaudDib posted:

You have to modulate your expectations, it’s a laptop chip in a SBC form factor, it’s never gonna be as good as a desktop or engineered SFF PC with discrete GPUs and GDDR memory.

That said, Gemini Lake makes a nice HTPC thanks to its support for HDMI 2.0b and HEVC 10bit (which is Blu-ray 4K), there is nothing better considering you can pick them up in surplus condition for as little as $125 for a barebones (mine still had the plastic on them).

Tiger Lake has Xe graphics which is reasonably competent - from what I remember it’s between Picasso and Renoir tier, which is not bad at all, and there are titles where it wins against Renoir. It also adds Adaptive Sync support which is a biggie. And right now you can’t actually buy a NUC-style device with a Renoir, AMD has been really bad about providing adequate supply of their APUs, so it’s a bit of a comparison against a paper chip. Against the Picasso based devices which are actually getting made, Tiger Lake smokes them hard.

I think ice lake probably does as well and iirc it’s also got Xe graphics as well? But it’s slower across the board because it’s not super fin and clocks lower.

I'm really excited for some of those Renoir embedded systems to get released - I'm trying to replace a few computers at the makerspace with fanless models. No more vacuuming out sawdust on the monthly with competent CAD/CAM support is gonna whip.

trilobite terror
Oct 20, 2007
BUT MY LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE FORUMS!
If your budget is “$300 or lower” somebody explain to me why an eBay optiplex isn’t a substantially better option

wet_goods
Jun 21, 2004

I'M BAAD!

Threadkiller Dog posted:

Been toying with the idea of turning my 9900k into a nuc or htpc whenever i retire it. Its on an ITX board already so with some heavy allcore downclocking and a cute litte case i dream it will be all shades of possible. The igpu should be good enough.

Just have to find an actual use case for it first :downs:

Use an hd plex hd5 for fanless glory

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
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NewFatMike posted:

I'm really excited for some of those Renoir embedded systems to get released - I'm trying to replace a few computers at the makerspace with fanless models. No more vacuuming out sawdust on the monthly with competent CAD/CAM support is gonna whip.

there was a batch of Asus PN50s that was supposed to be showing up "mid january" at QuietPC, now they are scheduled for "early feb", dunno if that means they sold out already or if they were delayed again. They were only expecting something like 20 units across all SKUs. Availability has been hell on Renoir products.

Do note that most NUCs are not fanless. There are some places like Akasa and HDPlex that specialize in making fanless chassis that you can put them into, but it will be an extra spend on top of the NUC itself. Actually depending on the unit, if they really wind the fan up they can be kinda loud, you can't fit a giant 120mm/140mm enthusiast case fan into a NUC footprint.

https://hdplex.com/hdplex-fanless-nuc-kit.html

https://hdplex.com/hdplex-h1-todd-fanless-computer-case.html

https://hdplex.com/hdplex-h5-fanless-computer-case.html

http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.list.tpl&type=Fanless%20Chassis&type_sub=Fanless%20NUC

http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.list.tpl&type=Fanless%20Chassis&type_sub=Fanless%20Mini%20ITX

movax posted:

Yeah, I'm curious to see how Xe benches in more detail on a NUC. Debating NUCing as a Plex server instead of a NAS w/ QuickSync/NVENC and at that point I might as well mount to back of TV and just plug right in and use it for all sorts of things — that's where the extra NIC would come in handy, and 2.5 GbE doesn't hurt there!

The other gotcha is that they obey the boost limits so they are not necessarily the best for sustained load. PN50 will throttle if you do something that puts sustained load on it like other AMD laptop chips, and Intel is presumably the same way. So you gotta balance the size of the NUC-style units against the performance of the Deskmini X300/a pure mITX build with a grey-market 4750G chip (or similar). That's particularly true with fanless chassis, the fanless chassis are not as small as a normal NUC with a fan, so at that point maybe it's worth stepping up to a standalone mITX board with a passive chassis.

May not be an issue unless you are really nailing it with AVX instructions (software-encoding with Plex may not be as good as you think it will be, x264 is pretty heavy) but it's something to bear in mind, it may fall back to under 3 GHz if you are hitting it hard in Plex for a sustained period of time. It's still 8 cores and you won't get anything more powerful in that form factor, but it's not a silver bullet either.

Also, FYI, HDPlex has some chassis where they use the M.2 slot for a PCIe riser so you could potentially use a PCIe nic there regardless of what they put in the unit itself.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Jan 19, 2021

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Paul MaudDib posted:

The other gotcha is that they obey the boost limits so they are not necessarily the best for sustained load. PN50 will throttle if you do something that puts sustained load on it like other AMD laptop chips, and Intel is presumably the same way. So you gotta balance the size of the NUC-style units against the performance of the Deskmini X300/a pure mITX build with a grey-market 4750G chip (or similar). That's particularly true with fanless chassis, the fanless chassis are not as small as a normal NUC with a fan, so at that point maybe it's worth stepping up to a standalone mITX board with a passive chassis.

May not be an issue unless you are really nailing it with AVX instructions (software-encoding with Plex may not be as good as you think it will be, x264 is pretty heavy) but it's something to bear in mind, it may fall back to under 3 GHz if you are hitting it hard in Plex for a sustained period of time. It's still 8 cores and you won't get anything more powerful in that form factor, but it's not a silver bullet either.

Also, FYI, HDPlex has some chassis where they use the M.2 slot for a PCIe riser so you could potentially use a PCIe nic there regardless of what they put in the unit itself.

I think most people mostly want the iGPU side of things and hitting the QuickSync HW to do the lifting for encoding which should be lower TDP than having the CPU run encoder(s). I don't even know if I need it per se as my client device would be an ATV, but I like to try and keep things versatile. I've got a DeskMini 310 build I'm using for a co-lo application and while it's in my office getting set up, the Noctua L9i cooler is pretty quiet. Under load though, definitely the loudest thing in my office.

e: That HD5 chassis is pretty slick. Lol'd at the "it is a crime to use Al in a passive system" graphic.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
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movax posted:

I think most people mostly want the iGPU side of things and hitting the QuickSync HW to do the lifting for encoding which should be lower TDP than having the CPU run encoder(s). I don't even know if I need it per se as my client device would be an ATV, but I like to try and keep things versatile. I've got a DeskMini 310 build I'm using for a co-lo application and while it's in my office getting set up, the Noctua L9i cooler is pretty quiet. Under load though, definitely the loudest thing in my office.

e: That HD5 chassis is pretty slick. Lol'd at the "it is a crime to use Al in a passive system" graphic.

yeah. One thing I haven't seen looked at yet is whether Xe improves the QuickSync quality at all, because NVENC has always been a cut above QuickSync, which has always been a cut above AMD VCE/AMD AMF.

Renoir apparently does not improve the AMF quality over previous generations but I haven't heard either way on Tiger Lake yet. Right now NVIDIA is basically unchallenged, Turing NVENC is amazing and I'd love to have it in ARM chips.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Paul MaudDib posted:

yeah. One thing I haven't seen looked at yet is whether Xe improves the QuickSync quality at all, because NVENC has always been a cut above QuickSync, which has always been a cut above AMD VCE/AMD AMF.

Renoir apparently does not improve the AMF quality over previous generations but I haven't heard either way on Tiger Lake yet. Right now NVIDIA is basically unchallenged, Turing NVENC is amazing and I'd love to have it in ARM chips.

I'd love for someone to sell Quadro T2000s on MXM / M.2 2280/22110 modules but it'll probably never happen sadly. Would be perfect for a super-integrated ESXi type box to give it something to pass-thru, or to any mini-PC platform to give it the best encoder generally available. I'm curious how Apple's cores stack up, but more difficult to compete them directly. Unless M1 also includes the same cores that are found on the Ax series? iPhone does 4K 60FPS IIRC.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
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movax posted:

I'd love for someone to sell Quadro T2000s on MXM / M.2 2280/22110 modules but it'll probably never happen sadly. Would be perfect for a super-integrated ESXi type box to give it something to pass-thru, or to any mini-PC platform to give it the best encoder generally available. I'm curious how Apple's cores stack up, but more difficult to compete them directly. Unless M1 also includes the same cores that are found on the Ax series? iPhone does 4K 60FPS IIRC.

M1 has the same cores that are on whatever iPhone iteration uses it. There is support in ffmpeg for hardware-accelerated encoding via h264_videotoolbox already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOZ7p7Zmz2s&t=183s

(there are also preliminary builds of ffmpeg available for x264 encoding that run natively on the M1 (not through rosetta), as described in that video, although you will probably have to compile them yourself at this stage of the game)

Not sure whether there are quality improvements relative to the earlier Apple hardware encoders though, or how any of the Apple hardware encoders compare to QuickSync/NVENC. Up until now it wasn't really feasible to directly run plex/ffmpeg in any kind of reasonably user-accessible way so I don't think anyone cared, now that has obviously changed and nobody has done the work on that yet to figure out how good it is. But M1 Mac Mini could definitely make an interesting Plex box if it's good.

(also, Apple has apparently unlocked the bootloader, and while it's in very early stages there are already some builds of linux being worked up for it! apparently there is no documentation available though, so that's going to be a trial and error thing I guess.)

https://mobile.twitter.com/cmwdotme/status/1350661744193110018

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Jan 19, 2021

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Well, here is Phantom Canyon — assuming RTX 2060's got the latest NVENC, there's the probably hilariously expensive Plex / HTPC / little gaming box that checks all the boxes... except, no dual LAN.

Doesn't seem like the most direct upgrade from Hades Canyon though, kind of sideways in a lot of directions. Maybe used Hades Canyon NUCs are the sweet spot now.

Cygni
Nov 12, 2005

raring to post

What is the use case for dual NIC in an htpc box? Honest question not bein snarky, just wondering what people use it for cause I've always wondered. Teaming them?

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness
Considering the 4x USB and 2x TB4 ports, you could easily fix the lack of a second RJ45 if you needed it.

Cygni posted:

What is the use case for dual NIC in an htpc box? Honest question not bein snarky, just wondering what people use it for cause I've always wondered. Teaming them?

If the box is cheap enough, dual NICs means you can use it as a firewall for gigabit internet without having it choke itself (at least not choke itself on the NIC layer, anyhow). No reason to use a $500+ box for a firewall, though, unless you're doing some real heavy lifting with it. At $1000+ it would be downright silly.

Otherwise yeah, you could team them I guess, but that seems like a super-niche application considering you'd be better served by something like a single 10Gb NIC in most cases (which you can add via TB if you care to).

DrDork fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jan 21, 2021

movax
Aug 30, 2008

DrDork posted:

Considering the 4x USB and 2x TB4 ports, you could easily fix the lack of a second RJ45 if you needed it.


If the box is cheap enough, dual NICs means you can use it as a firewall for gigabit internet without having it choke itself (at least not choke itself on the NIC layer, anyhow). No reason to use a $500+ box for a firewall, though, unless you're doing some real heavy lifting with it. At $1000+ it would be downright silly.

Otherwise yeah, you could team them I guess, but that seems like a super-niche application considering you'd be better served by something like a single 10Gb NIC in most cases (which you can add via TB if you care to).

For me, was thinking dual NICs to have a HW transcode-capable box that enjoys a fast pipe to NAS / file server and then also has a link to clients that's somewhat independent.

I'm sure if I spent 30 seconds doing an Excel spreadsheet it would show that a single GbE NIC meets all reasonable requirements by a factor of at least 2 or 3, but where's the fun in that?

e: Do TB 10GbE NICs not suck? I am skeptical of effectively any interconnect besides PCI Express — assuming that 10GbE NICs basically run on the PCIe lanes on a TB controller, is there not fuckery with hot-plugging / etc?

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

movax posted:

For me, was thinking dual NICs to have a HW transcode-capable box that enjoys a fast pipe to NAS / file server and then also has a link to clients that's somewhat independent.

I'm sure if I spent 30 seconds doing an Excel spreadsheet it would show that a single GbE NIC meets all reasonable requirements by a factor of at least 2 or 3, but where's the fun in that?

e: Do TB 10GbE NICs not suck? I am skeptical of effectively any interconnect besides PCI Express — assuming that 10GbE NICs basically run on the PCIe lanes on a TB controller, is there not fuckery with hot-plugging / etc?

Yeah, I have to imagine you're correct, given that a 4k BluRay is ~100Mbps. If the NUC isn't doing any actual file storage itself, it seems unlikely you'd need much more than that.

Plus, at $1000+ for the NUC itself, what's another $20 for a USB 1Gb NIC or $150 for a 10GbE NIC (or $170 for a 10Gb SFP+)?

e; That is correct: 10Gb NICs leverage the PCIe-over-TB protocol. There's no real "fuckery" with hot-plugging other than you have to ensure your BIOS is set to allow PCIe access over TB in the first place, since it's a wee bit of a security hole. I have a 10Gb SFP+ adapter on my main PC and it works quite well, except on occasion where the driver/Windows forgets that I've set it to be authorized to connect and have to go press butan in the driver app again. I mean I'm sure it slightly slower than native PCIe cards, but it's close enough I don't notice/care.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jan 21, 2021

movax
Aug 30, 2008

DrDork posted:

Yeah, I have to imagine you're correct, given that a 4k BluRay is ~100Mbps. If the NUC isn't doing any actual file storage itself, it seems unlikely you'd need much more than that.

Plus, at $1000+ for the NUC itself, what's another $20 for a USB 1Gb NIC or $150 for a 10GbE NIC (or $170 for a 10Gb SFP+)?

Sometimes I idly think about how if I sat down and actually was a good engineer and wrote down my strict requirements, I'd find that my 2600K platform still does everything I need in terms of file storage, media serving and everything and I don't have to build anything new. I could transplant it, get a new HBA and could definitely make it all work out just fine.

That makes me sad and most PMs worst nightmare because gently caress that, I just want to build to build, dammit — gimme some loose reqs and call it a day.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

movax posted:

Sometimes I idly think about how if I sat down and actually was a good engineer and wrote down my strict requirements, I'd find that my 2600K platform still does everything I need in terms of file storage, media serving and everything and I don't have to build anything new. I could transplant it, get a new HBA and could definitely make it all work out just fine.

Except clearly a 2600K doesn't have enough PCIe lanes, so you should go with a Xeon and if you're going that route you might as well upgrade to ECC RAM and Xeon v3s are cheap on eBay but v4's aren't that much more expensive and...and...

I think the best part about being an engineer is finding ways to convince yourself you "need" new gear to play with.

Like do I need a new bank of NVMe SSDs for my NAS so I can try shoving a Steam folder on there? Nah. Do I want to? Hell yes. Will I use it to justify my investment in 10Gb fiber networking? Yes. Will I use the investment in 10Gb fiber networking to justify the investment in NVMes? Yes. Is that circular? gently caress you.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Well it looks like Intel might actually have TSMC make some CPUs, apparently they're going to be i3s for now: https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/intel-TSMC-5nm

These are the usual analyst rumours so I dunnow how reliable it is. Seems reasonable enough that they'd start with just one segment, but still this is a pretty huge deal.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

mobby_6kl posted:

Well it looks like Intel might actually have TSMC make some CPUs, apparently they're going to be i3s for now: https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/intel-TSMC-5nm

These are the usual analyst rumours so I dunnow how reliable it is. Seems reasonable enough that they'd start with just one segment, but still this is a pretty huge deal.

2H21 seems really aggressive to me, unless I'm misunderstanding portability of the process. PDKs aren't inherently the most portable things in the world, so... is it a thing where since they both have ASML/etc equipment in their lines that it becomes easier? How much of their actual volume limitation is not getting enough i3s out to the OptiPlexes of the world? From what I've heard, like every other big co, they've essentially got a partially bespoke EDA process / set of tooling around building complex digital logic and most of those guys don't like to share.

Last thing I designed was on 65 nm, so I'm clueless / RUMINT on this area in terms of speculation.

in a well actually
Jan 26, 2011

dude, you gotta end it on the rhyme

On one hand i3 is nicely low risk and simple and not critical ip

Otoh that’s not where they need 5nm lol

Beef
Jul 26, 2004
Quoting from HN comments: The report is all speculation, not some credible source leak.

edit: I'm quoting it because it's factually correct? The source of the 'news' is a report from a market analysis firm, speculation from before the CEO change.

Beef fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Jan 21, 2021

Fame Douglas
Nov 20, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
Not sure people posting on HN have any advance knowledge. Seems like a rather pedestrian crowd.

Fame Douglas fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jan 21, 2021

movax
Aug 30, 2008

PCjr sidecar posted:

On one hand i3 is nicely low risk and simple and not critical ip

Otoh that’s not where they need 5nm lol

I mean an i3 is gonna have the same CPU core and other key architectural features in it that an i5 or i7 does, but also yep, that's not where they need 5 nm.

in a well actually
Jan 26, 2011

dude, you gotta end it on the rhyme

movax posted:

I mean an i3 is gonna have the same CPU core and other key architectural features in it that an i5 or i7 does, but also yep, that's not where they need 5 nm.

I think the architectural features worth real money vs i3 are in the real xeons

BlankSystemDaemon
Mar 13, 2009



Typically when you buy ECC you also have a need for a lot of memory, and you're simply not gonna get that without the buffering that RDIMMs have, which means Xeon as i3 only does UDIMM ECC.

EDIT: Xeons also have a LOT more on-die cache, and they scale out on multi-die boards with UPI links.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Jan 21, 2021

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
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i3s being the thing you choose to port to the best process that you're sending out at great expense makes very little sense to me.

Tiger Lake-H and Rocket Lake (or even Alder Lake) isn't going to dump on AMD to the extent that it would make sense to reserve the Intel fab capacity for higher-end Intel processors imo.

maybe it is a misinterpretation/miscommunication, someone saw "4C die" and thought it was the i3s when it's actually ultrabooks (-U processors) being sent out. That would be where TSMC's improvements would make the most difference over 10SF.

i3s being on TSMC also doesn't make sense from a cost perspective either. Ultrabooks do, you can bury the margin there if it's a premium product that performs better than what they can fab internally.

The other interesting question is what this says about Keller's departure. Some people were saying he left because of a "disagreement about process outsourcing", if it turns out that Intel's plan all along was to outsource (which would have to have been planned years in advance, it would have been well-known at that time) then did Keller argue against outsourcing, or is that argument just a bunch of crap and it really was an illness in the family all along? But now he's joined another company a year later...

Cygni
Nov 12, 2005

raring to post

I think the TSMC orders are for capacity, not capability. In 2H21, intel is supposed to basically be off 14nm entirely and using 10nm superfin for mobile, server, destkop, and graphics, which supposedly is basically equal in density than TSMC 5nm according to Intels claims. But thats a ton of lifting for a newish node (however we are defining nodes these days).

Could be an issue of Intel not wanting to dual source a higher end part like a Xeon or a mobile parts due to there then being two different specs for powers and thermals that OEMs would have to design around.

So all thats left is the consumer stuff, and the desktop Alder Lake S is likely using the same mask as the high end mobile part with different binning... so whats the last thing left we can dual source?

I'm just guessin obviously.

e: btw im wrong on the 10nm vs TSMC 5nm density, i think the 5nm density is higher than i thought!

Cygni fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jan 21, 2021

GutBomb
Jun 15, 2005

Dude?
Could just be Intel trying to take some of TSMC’s capacity away from AMD and Apple, if it’s even really a thing.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

GutBomb posted:

Could just be Intel trying to take some of TSMC’s capacity away from AMD and Apple, if it’s even really a thing.

Apple already have first-dibs on however much of 5nm as they wanted. So they're not snaking anything from them. AMD....maybe, but that presumes AMD is ready to go with a 5nm design already.

To me it seems like the lowest-cost option to test-drive outsourcing as a concept. If it works, great, maybe for round two they apply it to some tiers where it'll actually make sense. If it doesn't work, well they didn't lose too much profit off it.

Or, as has been said, it could just be a misunderstanding and it's not really cheap-o desktop i3s that are getting talked about in the first place.

wet_goods
Jun 21, 2004

I'M BAAD!

DrDork posted:

Apple already have first-dibs on however much of 5nm as they wanted. So they're not snaking anything from them. AMD....maybe, but that presumes AMD is ready to go with a 5nm design already.

To me it seems like the lowest-cost option to test-drive outsourcing as a concept. If it works, great, maybe for round two they apply it to some tiers where it'll actually make sense. If it doesn't work, well they didn't lose too much profit off it.

Or, as has been said, it could just be a misunderstanding and it's not really cheap-o desktop i3s that are getting talked about in the first place.

Regarding margin, outsourcing the lowest margin products does make sense because you free up your own capacity to make higher margin products full time. In theory, Intel would rather keep a larger share of a more expensive product.

Canned Sunshine
Nov 20, 2005

CAUTION: POST QUALITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION



Cygni posted:

e: btw im wrong on the 10nm vs TSMC 5nm density, i think the 5nm density is higher than i thought!

Intel’s 10 nm is similar to TSMC’s original 7 nm node in terms of density. If Intel can get their 7 nm node fixed, it will be close to TSMC’s current 5 nm node, but TSMC might be on improved 5 nm by then.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

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Beef
Jul 26, 2004
At first I'm excited about Intel doing another high performance CPU project. But then I realize we're only going to hear from it in 3 to 5 years, if at all :(
There's the graph processor Intel is working on, but I doubt it's something the general public is going to be programming.

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