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  • Arsenica - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    Regarding the napkin math, Ice Lake Xeons have many SKUs (from 8 to 40 cores) and many of them use 2 dies so we cannot say for sure that those 115K units use 115K dies.
  • Casper42 - Wednesday, March 17, 2021 - link

    2 dies?
    I wasn't aware Intel was doing that on Ice Lake.
    I thought it was all normal monolithic dies using the previous LCC/HCC/XCC nomenclature.
    Especially as I heard XCC would be delayed compared to LCC/HCC.
  • flgt - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    I wonder to what extent Intel's control of production and supply chain will help it avoid a huge loss of market share to Milan. I would think in this market that being able to deliver 10's or 100's of thousands of processors on time is critical.
  • Lakados - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    It's a huge help, AMD may be announcing their new EPYC, next week but who knows when availability will hit but one of the big purchasing times is the end of Q4 and the beginning of Q1. That way big purchases can be spread over the two years to round out the budget numbers by timing the delivery times accordingly. In my case, any hardware that arrives after July 1 can not be included in the previous year's budget and must be in the new year, and auditing is pretty hard on that rule. Ensuring availability for May & June is a big deal for a lot of Enterprise purchasing and to date, it has been a pretty consistent shortcomming on AMD's side.
  • mode_13h - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Can't really blame AMD for Intel's failings. There's no way AMD could've realistically predicted this level of demand for their products, and a big part of that has been Intel's continued failure to execute.
  • edzieba - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Are you seriously trying to blame Intel for the worldwide increase in semiconductor demand?
  • mode_13h - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link

    No, I mean their interminable 10 nm delays. Clearly.

    However, I probably read Lakados' post too quickly, as it seems to be more nuanced than I originally thought. I'm not sure my post is relevant, but oh well.
  • Yojimbo - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    AMD is in the situation they are in because of AMD. AMD spun off their fabs. The good and the bad of that decision rests entirely with AMD. AMD also put all their eggs into the TSMC 7 nm basket. The good and bad of that decision rests entirely with AMD.
  • TheJian - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link

    Wasting wafers on consoles that make single digit to mid teen margins (meaning 15% or less or you'd just say 15% right?), is also why AMD is in this position. Every wafer that goes to this crap is another bunch of server/hedt/gpu products that can't be sold at MUCH HIGHER MARGIN, for ...wait for it...NET INCOME! So yeah, get ready for 3nm Intel TSMC chips as they bought 53% of the 3nm production AT TSMC...ROFL. What now AMD?

    AMD stock price falling in...Wait it already did $20ish already. RUN, or you soon will be hurt even more. AMD's income has MILES to go before it reaches their current stock price. You are currently reading part of the reason AMD will have a difficult time getting there. Stop making console chips and NET INCOME will skyrocket (each of those chips for $10-15 profit becomes 100's/1000's instead!). Best thing you could do is tell both MSFT/SONY call intel, we don't like peanuts any more! ~480mm^2 for a XEON (depending on cores). So AMD should be selling a EPYC instead of a console soc that makes $10-15. That is just stupid. No, mega stupid is a shortage of silicon. Double stupid? Whatever, it's DUMB.

    At AMD, you should be fired for committing ANY silicon to consoles going forward. You are committing NET INCOME suicide yearly not to mention wasting tons of engineering on both designs (multiple, for refreshes etc too for both consoles, what a waste of AMD resources). NV passed because it would rob from CORE R&D (yep, and NET INCOME). Oh wait, that CORE R&D is what makes more NET INCOME. So losing it...Nobody connecting the dots here? LOL. Is this coming out in chinese or something? ROFL. You should be fired for not predicting 500mm^2 dies that make you $10-15 is far worse than a roughly same size die that makes you 5K (10k? 15k? or more). That 115K they shipped is about 1/2Billion roughly at 5K each. These are tests before REAL shipments begin. You won't get that from a console. Ship 10mil of those junkers and maybe you made $200mil. If those were servers instead? BILLIONS instead. See the point? You can't afford to make peanut chips in a silicon shortage. You stop making those (like Intel did, see the 10% short on the bottom end for 2yrs or so), and move production to the HIGH MARGIN stuff as much as you can (see Intel Q reports 5.9B this Q up from 4.3B prior Q, massive INCOME GROWTH!). This isn't rocket science, but rather it's basic economics. Sell highest margin stuff until you can't, ONLY then do you make the junk because you're forced (no more high margin stuff to sell, duh). If there is a massive glut of wafers, ok, make everything you can. But in a shortage? Only a fool makes poor people products. Facebook, Google, etc etc will all pay far more than joe 6pack can for your 500mm^2. Whenever your console deal is up, FIRE the next person that says to RE-UP that contract with ANY console maker. That person is COSTING you net income. Demote LISA and re-hire the DARK MAYOR. He gets it, make kings FIRST or don't make money (comic AMD fired him 2011 for advising them to do exactly what they are doing now with cpu/server - MAKE KINGS!). The board etc chose console, he said you're all stupid, they said you're fired. A decade later, they're following DIRK's advice and kind of winning (just needed to STOP their ideas from 2011 so they could make more NET INCOME). NO CONSOLES! IDIOTS. Consoles=NO INCOME (ok, ALMOST is close enough to NONE here).

    I'll remind you all, even MSFT/SONY lost 3.5B EACH (4B+ for one of them IIRC) on the last gen (x360/ps3). I wonder what the tally will be for PS4/Xbox1. You can google that easily. Kotaku or someone wrote it along with others IIRC.

    https://www.tomsguide.com/us/playstation-ps3-sony-...
    ROFL....2009.
    https://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/xbox-360-and-ps3-...
    2013 view still the same. Might be stories on the current gen, I expect less losses (machine is cheaper now), but for AMD the peanuts is just killing the INCOME/margins.

    I can't wait for the next LOSS. Why even waste the effort? Just make HEDT/SERVER/GPU instead. PLEASE! Maybe I'd be a shareholder again if they announced the end of console socs by AMD. Until then, Intel. If they crash the dollar (great reset incoming people if Biden and co aren't arrested at some point for stealing an election and finally put to death as traitors etc) Intel buys AMD or they just go bankrupt. Heck, many will go bankrupt if the current situation continues (many still shutdown etc, printing trillions while making nothing leading to massive trade def, etc). WAKE UP.
  • at_clucks - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link

    Then again consoles are what realistically bankrolled AMD while they were developing Zen. Going back and saying "such a bad decision" doesn't consider the fact that without it AMD would certainly not be in the relatively well off position they are now.
  • mode_13h - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link

    Yeah, consoles were a stable income stream through years when AMD was hemoraging money.

    And making console chips for MS gives AMD some theoretical advantages in better Direct3D support for their GPUs and MSVC support for their CPUs.
  • mode_13h - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link

    I'm pretty sure AMD doesn't buy the wafer capacity for console chips. AMD only designs them, by contract, for Sony and MS. I think Sony and MS probably deal with TSMC, directly. At least, when it comes to negotiating and purchasing wafers.

    And no matter who designs them, they're still going to consume fab capacity, because Sony and MS don't seem ready to stop making consoles any time soon.
  • mode_13h - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link

    And even if Sony & MS did buy wafers through AMD, you've got to imagine those wafers were purchased YEARS in advance. AMD would be under contractual obligations and couldn't just turn around and decide to use them on Zen3 cores for Milan, instead.

    However, I know that MS and Sony control the IP for their respective console chips, and they're big enough customers that I don't see why they wouldn't deal with fabs, directly.
  • eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Actually, that (prediction of demand, project management of manufacturing) is exactly what the business side (marketing, forecasting, production management) of any company is supposed to do; doesn't matter if that chip maker is AMD, Intel or whatever. This mismatch of supply and demand will hurt AMD, and should have consequences at senior levels.
  • mode_13h - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link

    > and should have consequences at senior levels.

    Yeah, bonuses. No one could've accurately predicted the past year. There were so many variables & unknowables, and it's not like TSMC had an abundance of fab capacity that AMD simply passed up, at the very last minute.

    For AMD, the real disaster would've been getting caught with too much inventory on its hands, after paying absolute top-dollar for the wafers. Any shareholder lawsuits for AMD not doing *even better* than they have would be laughed right out of court.
  • Exotica - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    So rather than getting mad over your pre-review of Rocket Lake, and blacklist you, instead they take the opportunity to speak to you and market themselves and their Ice Lake product, and show what they are doing and how they’re benefiting customers. Seems very professional to me.
  • Exotica - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    Good to know that 10 nm desktop parts are finally yielding and shipping in volume. Took 6 long years but at least they didn’t give up. Let’s see how they refine 10 nm and when they ramp 7 nm. Long live x86!
  • McCartney - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    do i want this or do i wait til next year for the dual socket pci-e 5.x variant? that's the real question.

    hopefully i'll have my DK05F by the time i make either purchase. i really cannot wait. been wanting a lili desk since the f1
  • McCartney - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    i believe the platform i'm referring to is "sapphire rapids". some sites are saying sapphire rapids is still due out late this year, where they have an updated ETA for tiger lake as sept 2021 (realistic). so i assume i wait for sapphire rapids?
  • mode_13h - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    This is just weird. "show what they are doing and how they’re benefiting customers" ??? That's like beyond spin.

    And it's very much in Intel's interest to run interference ahead of AMD's big Milan launch. So I don't see this article as a favor to Anandtech, but rather just the usual PR game.
  • Arsenica - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    They are after all the same people who pay Linus Sebastian (let's say) 30K so that he makes youtube videos titled "He wasted his money - Intel tech upgrade".
  • eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    Focusing to get the 10 nm production of larger dies on Xeon first makes a lot of business sense; server and mobile are the two areas where power consumption are important and profit margins are highest. AMD's inability to supply plenty of Zen3 Ryzen's for desktop makes the 14 nm Rocket Lakes still quite viable, at least for the time being.
  • mode_13h - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link

    That's a good point. Intel's biggest competitive advantage is simply its 14 nm manufacturing capacity. Rocket Lake doesn't even have to be good -- they'll sell by virtue of being the only CPU that you can actually buy.
  • antonkochubey - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    Hmm, and yet not a single >4C 10nm die has ever been actually seen installed and working in a real system, outside of Intel's lab.
  • JayNor - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    Intel's P5900 family are 10nm parts... up to 24 cores.
  • JayNor - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    Synopsys demoed Sapphire Rapids interfacing with their pcie5 system.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IOzj-1AsWk
  • Jorgp2 - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link

    What are you smoking?
  • antonkochubey - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link

    Realism?
  • lmcd - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    I mean, that desktop Alder Lake demo on screen for 10 seconds probably had 8 atom cores and 2-4 "Core" cores ;)

    Also as I understand it, 8 core tiger lake is being stockpiled at manufacturers for their 45w SKU releases.
  • mode_13h - Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - link

    I'm starting to believe it might actually launch, this year!

    Now, whether you'll actually be able to buy them is a separate matter.

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