News Intel Demos Discrete Arc GPUs, Still Coming in Q1

[Admin]

Intel’s latest Arc Alchemist video encoding demo has us unimpressed, and a little worried. Where’s the gaming performance?

Intel Demos Discrete Arc GPUs, Still Coming in Q1 : Read more

 

[gggplaya]

Intel is smart to not reveal performance before launch. I remember when AMD did that with the RX480, then Nvidia answered back with the GTX1060, stealing all their thunder before launch. Then AMD did it with the Vega 56 and 64, so Nvidia Answered back with a cut down version of the GTX 1080 and called it a GTX 1070 FTW or something like that.

It's best to launch and have at least several weeks of glory and excellent online reviews before Nvidia cuts down an existing product, to match the performance to price ratio of your launching product.

But then again, this ARC GPU could be total garbage which is why they aren't releasing performance numbers. In which case, they shouldn't sell to laptops first, because they are in decent supply. Instead they should make desktop GPU's because they'll sell out even if they do underperform, due to the current situation with GPU availability.

 

[jkflipflop98]

This won't do much to help gamers in all honesty. It isn't going to get better until Intel starts cranking these out in their own fabs. TSMC can't come close to the volume that Intel can produce.

 

[shady28]

This won't do much to help gamers in all honesty. It isn't going to get better until Intel starts cranking these out in their own fabs. TSMC can't come close to the volume that Intel can produce.

Yeah, this has been my thinking for a while too. Nobody can pump volume like Intel it seems.

However, Intel has a big % of TSMCs allocation. Almost as much as AMD has, I believe it is like 7% Intel and 9.5% AMD. I just don't know exactly how much of Intel's allocation is for ARC, and how much is going into their HPC parts for the Aurora supercomputer. However, at this point I would think fabbing chips for Aurora would be winding down.

 

[renz496]

Then AMD did it with the Vega 56 and 64, so Nvidia Answered back with a cut down version of the GTX 1080 and called it a GTX 1070 FTW or something like that.

Vega 56 is so very close to Vega 64. the gap between 1070 and 1080 is something like 20%. nvidia did that so even an OCed 1070 cannot reach 1080 performance. 1070Ti was a response to Vega 56. but back then Vega was touted as nvidia killer. this makes nvidia drop GTX1080 price
and then introduce 1080Ti in march 2017. in the end AMD only releasing Vega in june with the top Vega only matching GTX1080 performance.

TSMC can't come close to the volume that Intel can produce.

i don't think this is the case. volume wise TSMC most likely bigger. the thing is intel have the fab for themselves only while TSMC have to serve over 450+ client. also intel is one of TSMC top ten customer.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Yeah, this has been my thinking for a while too. Nobody can pump volume like Intel it seems.

However, Intel has a big % of TSMCs allocation. Almost as much as AMD has, I believe it is like 7% Intel and 9.5% AMD. I just don't know exactly how much of Intel's allocation is for ARC, and how much is going into their HPC parts for the Aurora supercomputer. However, at this point I would think fabbing chips for Aurora would be winding down.

If AMD is really only 9.5% of TSMC's production, nearly all of that would be going into the consoles. Those are relatively big chips and are selling in the millions. AMD CPUs would take second priority, and the GPUs are a distant third. TSMC is also ramping up capacity, not sure how much things have improved (can improve) without actual new fabs, though. Anyway, Intel's TSMC use would likely be nearly pure GPU production, though future CPUs might also be there as well.

 

[shady28]

If AMD is really only 9.5% of TSMC's production, nearly all of that would be going into the consoles. Those are relatively big chips and are selling in the millions. AMD CPUs would take second priority, and the GPUs are a distant third. TSMC is also ramping up capacity, not sure how much things have improved (can improve) without actual new fabs, though. Anyway, Intel's TSMC use would likely be nearly pure GPU production, though future CPUs might also be there as well.

Well, have to keep in mind there is AMD allocation / revenue (9.5%) which is across all TSMC nodes, and then there is allocation by node.

AMD reportedly is putting 80% of its 7nm allocation into consoles > Ref Link

This only leaves 20% for current gen Zen 3. So, AMD appears to me to be ramping down Zen 3, probably in anticipation of ramping up Zen 4.

This follows the same pattern they had in late 2020 :
1 Million Ryzen 5000 CPUs were Sold in Q4 2020: That’s Just 10-12% of AMD’s 7nm Capacity at TSMC

This is why I expect Zen 3D to be more of a process node technology demonstration & probably to iron out any mass production issues with 3D stacking. This isn't new tech but using it in relatively high power parts hasn't been done before AFIK, so they have to be careful they don't run into a bunch of quality issues. Working through that with a limited Zen 3D run before going all out on Zen 4 is probably a smart move.

However there's another piece in the allocation puzzle, which is the 5nm Zen 4. Based on the leak about long term 5nm allocation and allowing that TSMC fell behind this schedule a bit, I would bet AMDs 5nm allocation for 2022 is going to be mostly Zen 4. <- Ref Link

If we factor in revenue at TSMC by customer - noting this isn't directly related to 'fab allocation' but it should be in the ballpark (there are multiple sources for this including Statista and theinformationnet and a number of financial analysts), but Intel was 7.2% of TSMCs revenue and AMD was 9.2%.

However Intel's allocation and TSMC revenue is actually split between GPUs, and ASICs on 5nm, and a lot of those 'GPUs' may be fore HPC not consumers.

AMDs is of course as you said, split up across multiple nodes and products including Zen 3, Zen 3D, console 7nm SoCs, GPUs, and server CPUs.

My general take has been that, given limited allocations, AMD has focused on server / console, desktop / laptop CPUs 2nd, and GPUs last.

 

[jkflipflop98]

i don't think this is the case. volume wise TSMC most likely bigger. the thing is intel have the fab for themselves only while TSMC have to serve over 450+ client. also intel is one of TSMC top ten customer.

TSMC only has four 12-inch fabs.

Intel's D1X facility can outproduce all of TSMC's company by itself.

 

[saltweaver]

No information about Intel ARC supporting Octane renderer or Cycles. This could interest some customers.

 

[TerryLaze]

This won't do much to help gamers in all honesty. It isn't going to get better until Intel starts cranking these out in their own fabs. TSMC can't come close to the volume that Intel can produce.

Yeah, the thing with that is that intel has released like 22 skus right now just for mainstream CPUs, it's not like they can reduce CPU manufacturing to start making GPUs, I mean they could but it would hurt them hugely not being able to supply OEMs with CPUs.
I don't know if they are but they would have to make new FABs just for GPUs.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Yeah, the thing with that is that intel has released like 22 skus right now just for mainstream CPUs, it's not like they can reduce CPU manufacturing to start making GPUs, I mean they could but it would hurt them hugely not being able to supply OEMs with CPUs.
I don't know if they are but they would have to make new FABs just for GPUs.

Normally we convert a fab that's running an older process over to the new stuff. Like for 14nm we'll do Israel and Arizona. Then for 10nm we'll do Ireland and New Mexico. Then when 7nm hits Israel and Arizona will get upgraded again.

D1, of course, is always running the new hotness.