News Apple, Intel Could Become First to Adopt TSMC's 2nm Node

JayNor

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Raja has apparently been given the green light to reserve capacity far in advance. For Ponte Vecchio, CEO Bob apparently allowed the same thing, since Intel used the TSM N5 for its compute tiles. Now that the ARC GPUs are on TSM N6, it makes sense for the Meteor Lake ARC tile to be on a TSM process.
 

KyaraM

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Hog?? Intel is paying tsmc though... Its not like they are getting it free... And the latest are usually the most expensive as well.
Yeah, well, not that some people understand that in their blind hatred. Or that the industry is interconnected, and being able to produce one thing does not necessarily mean that you can automatically produce something else, or that you automatically have the necessary capacities to do so, or that one product can be used for different things. It all costs time and money, and it's a codependency all around. If anything, it shows that Intel wants to drastically improve products, but can't on their own (yet). So if you can't do something yourself, what do you do? Turn to the people who can.

It's so ironic. People bash Intel all the time telling then to get their stuff in order, but when they do, it's bad, too, and now they are "hogging resources". They want Intel to sell cheap, powerful CPUs, but they also have to produce them completely themselves, no help allowed. Doesn't matter how much that costs, they should just make a loss on it for everyone, and when they do and AMD, who are allowed to outsource everything, don't, more bashing and gloating on top of potential stakeholder lawsuits and stuff like that. Decide on one thing, guys. And get a basic grip on economy. Btw, this article makes it sound as if AMD didn't even start talks yet. They either need to get up earlier, or don't have a use for the node yet. Either way, it's their own fault. And it's on TSMC to gauge interest and expand accordingly.
 
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DavidC1

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According to the latest information, TSMC is going into production in late 2025, meaning products in 2026. Arrowlake is 2024, which means Lunarlake is probably 2025.

The chances of Lunarlake having TSMC 2nm for GPU tile is not very high. TSMC is having a bit of trouble with the plain vanilla 3nm, but much better on the variants. I'd bet on Intel using TSMC 3E.
 
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DavidC1

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Why do GPU's in particular benefit from leading edge nodes? My than a cpu can?

They benefit equally. They are both compute intensive so die sizes can get quite large. Newer processes allow smaller dies and/or more transistors.

Newer processes also increase performance and performance per/watt which both CPUs and GPUs require.

Actually I believe by the time Lunar Lake is out, the compute(CPU) tile will be on a more advanced process than the GPU. Compute tile on Intel 18A and GPU tile on TSMC 3nm variant.
 
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escksu

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Why do GPU's in particular benefit from leading edge nodes? My than a cpu can?

Yes, gpus do benefit alot more compared to cpu. The main reason is its design. Look at cpu and see how much of the space is taken up by cache memory instead of core logic? Now look at gpu and the space used for cache, its alot smaller.

Today, the main problem is core isnt about potential performance anymore, its about efficiency. Engineers could easily add more decoder, more interger and fpu etc into a core, but performance is not going to improve. The issue is with keeping those integer and fpu busy... Thats why so much die space is allocated to cache instead of core logic
 
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escksu

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They benefit equally. They are both compute intensive so die sizes can get quite large. Newer processes allow smaller dies and/or more transistors.

Newer processes also increase performance and performance per/watt which both CPUs and GPUs require.

Actually I believe by the time Lunar Lake is out, the compute(CPU) tile will be on a more advanced process than the GPU. Compute tile on Intel 18A and GPU tile on TSMC 3nm variant.

CPUs no longer benefit as much compared to gpu is a die shrink. This is due to cpu design which most of the space is taken up by cache instead of core logic.
 
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DavidC1

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CPUs no longer benefit as much compared to gpu is a die shrink. This is due to cpu design which most of the space is taken up by cache instead of core logic.

Look at Alderlake die and tell me that's the case.

Even if it doesn't provide much perf/watt increases as it used to it still does and being able to put many more transistors in the same area is a great benefit.

Also I forgot to say with Arrowlake the CPU tile will be on Intel 20A so it'll already be much more advanced than the TSMC on the GPU tile.
 
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