"Learn about the friend of PC hardware, Intel is a bit of water in recent years. First, the architecture of the Core processor is a small improvement, the operation is not improved, and the crown is crowned with the" toothpaste factory " And 10nm mass production is still waiting for a period of time; AMD relies on the desk-sided Ryzen processor, although the EPYC processor in the server field has not caused a serious threat for Xeon for a time, but if intel doesn't make some big hand, I am afraid I have to worry about further disorders.
There is a lot of questions that have appeared in the outside world. I have always been architectural and craftsmanship, INTEL, seems to have some HOLD in the field of their most hand, and it has been occupied by other fields. These seems to have a one without any discomfort, letting players doubt, what can INTEL still have to stabilize the leadership of the semiconductor industry? If you really abandon architectural and technology, what Intel can still rest?
"Intel is a data company."
Once, Inteltick-Tock process, the architecture has a strategy that has alternately upgraded the semiconductor industry, 32nm, 22nm, 14nm all the way to achieve a loneliness, but it has been a 10nm process, but it has encountered an unprecedented difficulty, delayed Unable to mass production. Unconscious, Intel14NM has used five generations of products, from the five generations of Core, Coffee Lake-R), and the process itself has evolved to 14nm ++.
However, it is necessary to end, Intel has high-profile announced the entire line of 10nm craft products, from the client to the server, from the 5G network to 3D packages, will be fully spread out of this year, where the client platform will see "Ice Lake" (Ice Lake).
In fact, the first generation of 10nm process client products in Intel plans is "Cannon Lake", but it has not been able to produce only a product, low-power mobile version of Core i3-8121U last year. .
It still belongs to the eight-generation Core family, dual-core four-thread, main frequency 2.2-3.2GHz, three-level cache 4MB, thermal design power consumption 15W, but there is no core graphics card, or not open, it is likely to be because of 10nm craft The rate is too low, not enough to make it "full of fire".
ICE Lake is different, which will cover the entire client market like the usual product family, bringing "incredible performance" (Incredible Performance).
At last month's architectural day events and just passed CES show, Intel's new technological strategy and product show seem to give an answer.
The origin of the six pillars
Whether it is the previous CES big exhibition, or last month's architecture day event, Intel has been focusing on its new technical strategy in six engineering fields, namely:
Processing - has leading process technology, is still the key to constructing leading products. Advanced packaging solutions extend transistor density in three-dimensional space, which will bring an exponential level to improve the capacity of calculation density.
Architecture - By advanced packaging and system integration technology, deploy a diverse scalar, vector, matrix, and spatial computational architecture to the CPU, GPU, Accelerator, and FPGA chip, And release power through the scalable software stack.
Memory - large capacity, high speed storage is critical to the next generation of calculated workloads. By combining flash and pride techniques, the blank in the memory layer can be filled to provide bandwidth closer to the silicon chip.
Ultrafine interconnection - communication technology is large to a wireless connection facing 5G infrastructure, smaller to the chip-level package and die interconnection. Only a large-scale heterogeneous calculation pattern can only be achieved in a comprehensive leading interconnection product.
Safety - With the continuous emergence of security threats, Intel provides security technology to help implement the full improvement of end-to-end and make security become critical differentiation factors.
Software - For developers, it has a common toolset with a good Intel chip that is critical to obtaining performance index levels.
For most common consumers, concerns are often concentrated in both architectures and processes, and the author is no exception as a senior DIYer, which is also the most direct related to us most directly related to us. However, when you are willing to pay, more is a feeling of reason, but it is more likely to give people a fresh pleasure.
The intel exists in the memories, more is a simple PC processor company, but in fact, Intel has long positioned as a data company and sets "all things" as the future development trend.
Around this, Intel has a summary of this CES: the evolution of these technologies is to laid the cornerstone in a more diverse data era.
"Forbes" senior analyst PATRICK MOORHEAD has previously stated that Intel has entered a larger market, and its potential market scale is only focused on 45 billion US dollars in traditional laptops and server, upgraded to set storage, network, IoT. And software and other areas of 300 billion US dollars.
Take Intel Ao Technologies as an example, in today's big data era, data is massive, diversity and dramatic growth are already common. Intel believes that data floods should not only be considered as a storage problem, and it can also treat it as an opportunity for data optimization. A successful modern data policy should be a policy defined by software, based on application requirements, and achieve smart division Floor.
The pride technology balances the high-performance and non-volatile storage of RAM, which will make more data in artificial intelligence and large data sets in artificial intelligence and large databases by placing more data into a closer to CPU. Fast processing speed, reduce the delay of access, thereby increasing the performance of the workload.
On the other hand, 5G has always been a technical and strategic focus of Intel. Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel Data Center, has mentioned that 5G transitions and its impact on the network, which has changed as a network of accelerated data and catalytic software, and has changed as the leap from analog to digital, and customizes The chip will be replaced by the container technology.
That is, we are in the central center of the world that is evolved with data, 5G is the DNA and cornerstone of future innovation platforms, bringing seamless connection, almost unlimited calculations.
Navin Shenoy revealed that Intel will introduce a new specially facing 5G wireless access and edge computing, 10nm-based network system chip, R & D code "Snow Ridge"; Intel XMM 5G modem using multi-mode 5G LTE architecture supports all 3 millimeter wave bands and 6GHz below, will be delivered to partners in the second half of 2019 and launch products in early 2020.
At the same time, due to the network binding principle, once 5G breaks the existing communication bottleneck, it will affect the data center, cloud computing, edge computing, etc., Intel will also face retail, video, industrial and smart cities, etc., for the Internet of Things Design high performance chips, enhanced edge computing, and vigorously develop computer vision technology.
As a hardware company in a traditional impression, Intel's importance of the software environment is also a heart. To put it bluntly, the light is still not enough, but also let everyone use it. The result of the perfect software environment is that the hardware base is almost the same, Intel's products can run faster; the actual performance is similar, Intel is more useful.
Such examples are all compared to the history of the processor, not to mention, single is the performance advantage of Intel's exclusive ICC compiler relative to the general GCC compiler, let them receive AMD and ARM once again again in the server field. Challenge. This kind of "soft" strength is also an important factor in Intel to more and more stabilize the dominant status.
Attacking, Intel is a leading position that has accumulated by the Core architecture and Tick-Tock strategy, and ran four help for architecture and crafts. In some areas of the six strategic pillars, in the view of ordinary consumers, it seems that the chip giants who are in the traditional impression do not take the chip giants, but it is actually the completion and help of architecture and process.
What will I do in the future? What is the future competitive basis? How to bring more value to users?
Gregory Bryant believes that comprehensive optimization of the entire computing system is the future competitive basis. Optimization is not limited to one aspect, but to see which company can combine some of the best CPUs, GPUs, AI accelerators, communication systems, high-speed storage, etc., so that they can eventually bring end users. More value.
The General Manager of the Intel Client Computing Division explained after the CES, the next calculation time requires innovation to perform in a completely different level, covering the entire ecosystem and spans computing, connection, and other aspects. The six strategic pillars have established a framework for Intel, which promotes the cornerstone developed by architecture and chip, and architects determine the specific goals of the development of the road map every year according to these pillars.
Architecture and craft
After you have met these relatively unfamiliar technical fields, go back and look at the two traditional home courts of architecture and crafts.
Although all kinds of various types were analyzed above, INTEL did a great long-term layout throughout the computing market, and it can be said that returning to the most direct-related architecture and craftscent of ordinary consumers, INTEL did have encountered a lot of trouble. And difficulties: The architecture of recent generation processors is small and improved, and the operational performance is not increased, and the 10nm new craft is not a long time.
Good at this year's CES, Intel demonstrates the first 10 nm Ice Lake processor, integrate Intel brand new "Sunny Cove" micro-architecture with high integration, and AI uses acceleration instruction sets and the 11th generation core graphics card, thus Improve graphic performance. Since 2019, Sunny Cove will become an infrastructure of the next generation PC and server processor.
In fact, I have rumored in the past few years, Intel has realized that the Core architecture system has begun to meet the future needs of the future, and will launch a new architecture system before and after 2020, and this happens to be in good agreement with today's situation. To certain extent, Intel is also more comprehensive and long-term in terms of development of the route.
The Sunny Cove architecture is designed to improve the calculation performance and reduce power consumption under the general computing task, and contain new features that can accelerate artificial intelligence and encryption, which can reduce delays, improve throughput, and provide higher parallelism Computing power is expected to improve from games to multimedia to data-centric application experience, its functional features include:
Enhanced microarching can perform more operation parallel.
A new algorithm for delaying.
Increase the size of the key buffer and cache, optimize the data-centric workload.
Architecture extension for specific use cases and algorithms. For example, enhance new instructions of encryption performance, such as vector AES and SHA-NI, and other key use cases such as compression / decompression.
At the same time, as the calculation type of the data center is as big as Han Wu's outbreak, Intel has been constructing different computing types of product portfolios, including Intel traditional CPU, Arria and Stratix FPGA, and its CREST neural network processing Wait, etc.
At the same time, in the GPU core graphics card, Intel digging a number of senior talents, and ICE Lake will integrate the 11th-generation core graphics card (currently the 9/9.5, the 10th generation is passed).
In the new nuclear display, the number of mainstream EU execution units have been increased from 24, and the three-level cache also increased to 3MB. The floating point calculation performance broke through one trillion times per second for the first time (1TFLOPS), almost AMD Ruilong 3 APU level.
Intel said that the 11th generation is scratched to improve the playability of the game and support Adaptive Sync to adapt to synchronization technology to ensure that the game frame rate, the picture is more stable, and the operation is expected to increase the AI performance when it is frequently consumer. Femback, and use advanced media encoders and decoders, you can create 4K video streams and 8K content very low power consumption.
It is also worth mentioning that the ICE Lake platform will also support lightning 3, Wi-Fi 6 for the first time.
Thunder 3 does not have to say more, in today's high-end notebook has become standard, directly integrated into the processor, will no longer need a separate controller, further streamline the notebook space, reduce power consumption, extend battery life, Extension performance.
Wi-Fi 6 is 802.11ax, the official version of the specification will be released this year, support upstream and downlink OFDMA, uplink MU-MIMO, 1024-QAM and other new technologies, not only higher rates on the basis of downward compatibility , Dense users, outdoor scenes, etc. performance stability will be better.
10nm Ice Lake processor and its PC product will be launched in the holiday sales season at the end of 2019, and in the previous CES 2019 exhibition, Intel also showed the real body of the mobile version of the Ice Lake processor, and related notebooks equipment.
Obviously, Ice Lake will follow the practice, first start from the mobile platform, and then go to the desktop platform.
The 10nm Ice Lake will completely reverse Intel's embarrassing situation in the past two years, from the technology to the product, from the market to the strategy, all into a new era. It can be said that after this caudn, Intel will re-embraced a Kangzhuang Avenue.
According to Intel, the race level of the 10nm process has been satisfactory, and it will continue to improve, and a series of advanced technologies harvested during the 10nm process research and development process will be more smooth.
At the same time, the Intel has reversed the style of acting, looking forward to various future vision and beautiful blueprints, re-focusing on technology and products, laying a more solid foundation, and on the other hand, the process technology, architecture, storage, and ultra-micro Even, safety, six strategic pillars, guiding the future development.
Intel Chief Architect Raja Koduri I have pointed out that not all transistors can be applied to different scenes, in different market sectors, the required transistor design is very diverse, such as communication transistors, I / O transistors, FPGA transistors, And traditional CPU logic transistors, even with a single process for a large percentageManufacturing large single-chip systems are not a wise practice.
Based on this, Intel's first new logical chip 3D stacking technology called Foveros in the industry, which can be fully stacked on logical chips. This is a system-level package integration, which is expected to extend the stack of wafers from a traditional passive intermediate interconnect layer and a stacked memory chip to a high performance logical chip such as CPU, GPU, and AI processors. To integrate high performance, high density The devices and systems of low-power silicon process technology are flattened.
Intel demonstrates Lakefield using "Foveros" 3D encapsulation technology to mix CPU architecture and package architecture using a 22ffl IO chip as an active carrier plate, and a 10nm chip is connected with TSV (silicon vent technology), including 1 Sunny Cove kernel and 4 Atom kernels (probably TREMONT). This micro-chip size is 12 * 12, standby power is only 2MW.
As for the 10nm process, the complexity of transistors manufacturing is not more accurate. If the process level is measured in the industry, the transistor density of the Intel 10nm process is higher than the 7nm DUV process of the Terrace.
Foreign website Semiwiki discusses the three-star 10nm, 8nm DUV, and 7nm EUV process, where the transistor density of the 10nm process is 55.5mtr / mm2, 8mm DUV is 64.4mtr / mm2, 7 nm EUV is not 101.23mTr / mm2, it is more than Intel 10nm process a little bit.
The Chinese Academy of Academy of Academy of Academy once mentioned in an academic conference that from transistor size data, the physical gate length of the 90nm node is 25 nm, the gate length of the 32 nm node is 24 nm, and the physical gate growth brought by the node progress is getting smaller. , Narrow the process node, actually there is no problem of shrinking the most critical, active region of the source, and the problem of "source-leak".
As can be seen from the indicator, as the node is changed, the manufacturing process should slow down with the recent limit, but Intel's requirements for transistor density do not decrease, and propose "ultra-mining" ideas. This is also a barrier that slows down the income, more effective continuation of Moore Law.
If the crystal management is solved as a word, the lithography process is understood as a pen, and the intel is equivalent to writing smaller words without easy replacement of the typography, wherein the difficulty can be imagined. Although the process is blocked, from the long run, the ultra-minus technical experience will clearly bring greater benefits to the subsequent process.
At this CES 2019 conference, Intel announced 10nm in PC, servers, new packaging technology, and 5G applications, covering all the directions involved in the six pillars. It can be seen that Intel spells the layout of this node is not a 10nm process itself, but a complete ecosystem built around the 10nm process.
Frontier
Ten years ag years INTEL has done a route map prediction, including the prediction of new materials, new processes. Now, when you look back, most of the directions in the forecast is no problem.
In the process of promoting molar law, 80% of the work is based on material reform, and the other 20% of the work is to seek advances in chemical processes, such as atomic layer deposition, atomic layer etching, etc., that is, how to study how The chip is small, and it is also necessary to use different ways to do these devices.
It is reported that Intel will evaluate the performance of semiconductor devices each year. These studies can further find how to better use transistors in the circuit, how to combine new transistors with new architecture, new features. At present, the location of CMOS is still very nice, and its power consumption and performance is better than most of the semiconductor components. At least in the last decade, it is still necessary to make chips as CMOS, and other new technologies can be mixed with CMOS to improve performance, reduce power consumption or reduce prices.
At the same time, for future new processors, Intel has corresponding work in several ways. For example, the neurological chip has a 10nm sample, which is a chip of non-von Norman architecture, which combines storage and computing units together to simulate the connection between neurons and neurons. It is a asynchronous control chip that can be self-study on the film, supports no supervision learning, supervising learning, self-supervision learning and enhancement learning model.
In terms of quantum calculations, Intel has been experimentally at 7, 17, 49 three quantum bit nodes. However, the number of mutual dryness is one of the 27 major problems in this century. It can only be used for millisecondary continuous calculations, and the quantum calculation is only 99.9%, while the traditional chip is 99.999999%, so the silicon CMOS + von Nuoyi Man's model will continue for a long time.
InTel China Institute, Song Jiqiang said that the miniature of CMOS will continue, but it will be implemented by different methods such as materials, chemical processes, and the transistor can be stacked by 3D packaging technology, and there are some new circuit control methods. It allows Moore's law to continue to advance.
It can be seen that for the post-Moore's law, Intel's backhand is still very sufficient.
Summarize
The tiger launched the power, it is natural to be quite terrible.
The new era is the largest transformation and innovation in Intel decades.
If the Intel's architecture is "Declaration", it is a series of innovative technologies in the CES, and the product and cooperation is a more comprehensive and deep display of the Declaration, which means it's the direction of yourself. More firm and confident.
Intel's new strategy requires measuring from two angles, "Is this a market need", "whether it can be implemented." The six pillars strategic very ambition. This strategy is ideal for Intel, taking into account the current status of changing data world and molar.
By the way, not only Intel, Moore Law is also a new reality that every chip manufacturer needs. If the chip manufacturer also insists on only a single big chip in the next five years, it is likely to be abandoned by the market.
Intel's financial situation has always been very good, but in the face of the turmoil, Intel's big handbook is very bold, it is very difficult.
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Original address: https://www.eeboard.com/news/intel-223/
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