News Intel Resuscitates 22nm Haswell Pentium Processor

[Admin]

Looks like the Pentium G3420 is making a comeback.

Intel Resuscitates 22nm Haswell Pentium Processor : Read more

 

[JayNor]

Intel is building a 22FFL base IO layer for Lakefield for its ultra low leakage properties.

This article projects 22nm growth in popularity due to being inexpensive for the planar transistors vs using finfet.

Foundries Prepare For Battle At 22nm

Foundries Prepare For Battle At 22nm Bulk CMOS, FD-SOI and finFETs all on tap as big players vie for differentiation. But where do chipmakers go after 28nm?

semiengineering.com

 

[dstln]

I feel bad for the customer that gets duped into buying a system with this.

 

[AlistairAB]

I feel bad for the customer that gets duped into buying a system with this.

Yeap, in other words a CPU for OEMs to fool corporate buyers (I'm still laughing after my clueless boss suddenly announced he was buying 100 x 21" monitors because they were "a good deal", to hell with actually buying what people want or need, this kind of scenario. Afterwards every employee just bought their own 27" monitors and brought those to work, myself included).

 

[King_V]

Yeap, in other words a CPU for OEMs to fool corporate buyers (I'm still laughing after my clueless boss suddenly announced he was buying 100 x 21" monitors because they were "a good deal", to hell with actually buying what people want or need, this kind of scenario. Afterwards every employee just bought their own 27" monitors and brought those to work, myself included).

Sadly, this still technically "proved" that the boss saved money. At least, if the boss was short-sighted enough to make that purchase, then he's shortsighted enough to believe that employees buying their own monitors for the workplace saved the company money - and now sets up expectations for other kinds of savings he can manage on the backs of his employees.

 

[Keviny Oliveira]

I feel bad for the customer that gets duped into buying a system with this.

Same bro.

 

[Keviny Oliveira]

R.I.P Intel

 

[Giroro]

For what it's worth, If you delid a Haswell i-5, you can easily overclock the 3.4GHz 4670k up to 4.3GHz or a more on air- and with similar IPC to Zen+ it's would totally be viable as a budget PC option (at least if you don't care about efficiency or security against speculative exploits). I just upgraded to Ryzen 3700x and.. I haven't really noticed much difference in a lot of day-to-day use cases

So Intel's 22nm isn't inherently that bad if Intel was to use better TIM and tweak the Haswell design... It really speaks to how little Intel has done to improve their processors in the last 6 years, until AMD forced them to start adding cores.
But since Intel isn't putting an updated design into the old process, I think they either have a customer who needs a LOT more of the same old thing their current system uses, because they can't/won't qualify new hardware (some military somewhere?). Or they might have a big customer/market where using cheap DDR3 RAM is more important than processing speed (China?)
But If it was purely for RAM comparability, I don't know why they would spin up a their 2 core design instead of 4.

 

[Zizo007]

This CPU is ****. It can't even compete with the 35W Athlon 3000G which also has much better graphics at 49$.

I won't even pay 10$ for this lmao

 

[Zizo007]

The Athlon 3000G is at least twice as fast as this.
Selling this is an insult for customers lol

 

[punkncat]

I figure that some very large entity wanted an order of these large enough to force Intels hand into making a run available. It states in the article that this will be an OEM only run. Figure something along the lines of someone building a butt ton of kiosk type, low processing power required environment and to echo Giroro, probably don't want to pay for DDR4, had 3 on hand, etc.
I am highly doubtful we will see these on the shelf in Best Buy equipped inside an econo box. Uninformed consumer or not there is FAR too much inexpensive equipment available that outperforms this by far for a purchasing agent to put company rep on the line in that way.

 

[mosan129]

Yeap, in other words a CPU for OEMs to fool corporate buyers (I'm still laughing after my clueless boss suddenly announced he was buying 100 x 21" monitors because they were "a good deal", to hell with actually buying what people want or need, this kind of scenario. Afterwards every employee just bought their own 27" monitors and brought those to work, myself included).

Meanwhile, everyone and their brother is spending 12 hours a day viewing their 6" or less smartphone screens...

 

[larkspur]

This is a completely erroneous article and needs to be either retracted or heavily edited. As strange as it may sound to some folks, the Pentium G3420 was not discontinued in 2015 as the author stated. I don't know where he/she got that info but it is completely incorrect. Intel has never stopped making these on their old 22nm node. On November 26, 2019 Intel released PCN 117291 - 00 which announced that the Pentium G3420 was finally being discontinued. You will find that here.

Obviously someone made a stink and Intel changed their mind because on December 5, 2019 Intel released a REVISION to the original PCN. This one is PCN 117291 - 01 and can be found here.

Anyway, this article makes it sound like suddenly Intel brought back a CPU that was discontinued in 2015 - this is completely incorrect and the article should be revised accordingly.

Edit: And their 22nm node is not obsolete - it is still used heavily. The definition of obsolete from Oxford: "no longer produced or used; out of date". Not the newest but definitely not obsolete.

 

[Chung Leong]

I figure that some very large entity wanted an order of these large enough to force Intels hand into making a run available. It states in the article that this will be an OEM only run. Figure something along the lines of someone building a butt ton of kiosk type, low processing power required environment and to echo Giroro, probably don't want to pay for DDR4, had 3 on hand, etc.

ATM would be my guess. Or self-checkout machine. Something that works with money. For security reason, buying existing stock from distributors is not an option.

 

[cmw_a1]

I would bet you are correct. It is something requiring this processor for a certification like an ATM machine or similar where everything has to be certified and old technology is the norm. NASA was buying 8088's off eBay to keep the space shuttles flying. Our nuclear launch systems still use 8 inch floppies although I understand that is about to change. It is so old and low tech that I guess it couldn't be hacked. I sure hope the new systems are that way!

I am not sure if they have revised these CPUs to mitigate speculative vulnerabilities at the hardware level but that would be my biggest concern if used for security or money. I guess that could be mitigated in software as well and these are such limited systems in a closed environment as well so this might not be a concern.

Otherwise, get ready for something like a late Black Friday deal at WAAAALLL-MAAARTTTSSSS! I hate those crap boxes they sell there and dread working on them. I cannot decide if the hardware or the owner of the hardware is worse.

 

[bit_user]

My guess is that demand for Intel's lowest-cost CPUs (i.e. Gemini Lake) shifted over to this Pentium SKU, since Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake are both made on the 14 nm node, which we're told is still facing supply shortages.

Of course, it would have to be for some cost-sensitive applications that have plenty of headroom for the additional power & cooling requirements of that chip.

 

[bit_user]

And their 22nm node is not obsolete - it is still used heavily. The definition of obsolete from Oxford: "no longer produced or used; out of date". Not the newest but definitely not obsolete.

I think the author meant that it's obsolete for CPU production, which is accurate. 22 nm CPUs are not competitive with 14 nm, not to mention TSMC 7 nm. The only way they can still try to compete is on cost, which could be why there's still some demand for this chip.

BTW, that was some good info, in the rest of your post. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Piri1974]

We should always let the market decide wether a CPU still has a means to exist or not.
Agreed, this is an old CPU, but there are many other old or slowish CPUs on the market:
AMD FX- and A-series (Piledriver 32nm and Bristol Ridge 28nm!), Intel Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake Celerons and Pentiums Silver,... and these are all still on sale too, albeit not always in big numbers.

So, both Intel and AMD still make CPUs on older Fab processes. Because they are cheap AND they still sell.
And we should not forget that there are billions of people on this planet who make a lot less money than we here in the West, and who don't even have say 300 Dollars to spend on a PC.
In those countries, you can probably find a big second hand market, and a market for "new" PCs with older technology like this old Pentium.
The chip has a good IPC, so it can handle office work quite well I guess.
If you compare this chip to Apollo Lake chips (even the quad cores) which are still on sale too, I would not be surprised if this G3420 is faster in many types of work.

So there are probably several reasons why this Pentium is back on sale:

• The shortage of current generation entry level Pentium Gold, Celeron and even slower Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake CPUs.
• Intels' production problems and/or shortages with more modern Fabs of 14 nm and smaller.
• Making chips on 22nm, 28nm and even 32nm is probably very cheap now.
• A big market for older CPUs in countries with lower average incomes, where people simply cannot afford the CPUs, GPUs etc. we buy here in the West.
• As always: It is the market which decides if a CPU still has a means to exist. Wether that CPU is OLD or not plays a much lesser role.
• AMD does not have the same short supply issues as Intel and the low end of the market. They have their modern Athlons and older A-series which are all easily available. Maybe Intel wants to counter their sales.
• Or maybe a big Chinese, Indian or other pc manufacturer said to Intel: "Hey, you have a short supply of your entry level Pentiums and Celerons. I am prepared to buy half a million of this older 22nm design. Deal? Otherwise I may buy AMDs A-series."

I have a pc with an old 28nm AMD A8-9600 cpu and it works well.
I even play Jedi Knight: Fallen Order on its integrated GPU. (on 720p resolution of course)
I just wanted to say: These older CPUs are sometimes not as slow as high-end buyers think, and they can still do many types of work properly.

Have a great day!
Carl

 

[InvalidError]

When I read that Intel was doing Haswell necromancy, I was expecting to see 10000/11000-series model numbers to fit with Intel's new theme of mixing generations

 

[punkncat]

I hate those crap boxes they sell there and dread working on them. I cannot decide if the hardware or the owner of the hardware is worse.

PEBKAC is always far worse. The hardware only acts and fails in specific ways. Stupid requires a lot of work to figure out.

 

[bit_user]

we should not forget that there are billions of people on this planet who make a lot less money than we here in the West, and who don't even have say 300 Dollars to spend on a PC.

Not to take away from your point, but a lot of them are living in places with bad electrical infrastructure and possibly high electricity costs. So, they would probably tend to go for old laptops, chromebooks, tablets, or Apollo Lake-class NUCs before anything with a 54 W CPU. And, as connectivity is often cellular, that's just more reason to go for a device with the cell modem built-in.

But, really, if your power is spotty, then having a device like a laptop or tablet with a built-in battery is a cheap alternative to a UPS. So, I would expect those classes of machines to dominate. Plus, they're power-efficient and very portable.

The chip has a good IPC, so it can handle office work quite well I guess.
If you compare this chip to Apollo Lake chips (even the quad cores) which are still on sale too, I would not be surprised if this G3420 is faster in many types of work.

Agreed.

I have a pc with an old 28nm AMD A8-9600 cpu and it works well.

My Windows desktop and Linux workstation are Sandybridge. My servers are AMD Phenom II and Haswell i3. My laptop is a Skylake i3. My "always-on" media server is Apollo Lake. SSDs all around, except for the AMD-based server. Everything is just fine.

I have a slight itch to upgrade the workstation, but I probably won't get around to it for a while longer. The AMD Phenom II would probably get replaced with a Ryzen 5 Pro, if I could buy a 3400G version (preferably new, but nobody will sell me one).

 

[ingtar33]

For what it's worth, If you delid a Haswell i-5, you can easily overclock the 3.4GHz 4670k up to 4.3GHz or a more on air- and with similar IPC to Zen+ it's would totally be viable as a budget PC option (at least if you don't care about efficiency or security against speculative exploits). I just upgraded to Ryzen 3700x and.. I haven't really noticed much difference in a lot of day-to-day use cases

So Intel's 22nm isn't inherently that bad if Intel was to use better TIM and tweak the Haswell design... It really speaks to how little Intel has done to improve their processors in the last 6 years, until AMD forced them to start adding cores.

there is so much wrong in this I don't know where to start.

1. original zen had the same IPC as broadwell, which is about 12% faster IPC then haswell; meaning original zen was 15% faster then this original Intel chip, original zen could get to 4.2ghz which is just 3% slower then 4.3ghz, meaning original zen at 4.2ghz was ~9% faster then haswell at 4.3ghz.
2. zen+ was an 8% improvement over original zen which means it was 17% faster then haswell (4.2ghz vs 4.3ghz)

this of course ignores the fact that dual core with hyper threading =/= a quad core cpu in any measure (the best you could hope from a 2/4 cpu under full load is to perform like a 2.5 true core cpu, meaning a quad core will out perform it by about 160% in fully threaded tasks

so what does this all mean? not a lot, you'd have to push all the way back into the Athlon branding to find a 2c/4t cpu from AMD on zen+; and those chips not only sell for <less money then what intel is selling this chip for, but they out perform it badly in benches.

as for your experience I find it hard to believe unless you only deal in 1-3 core applications. I too came from a quad core i5 haswell to an amd zen+ 8c/16 cpu. and the performance gain was huge. Of course I actually run a lot of things that hit my cores hard. So perhaps I am the ideal user for a huge cpu like this. I later upgraded to zen2, and had my eyes opened as this 6x/12t really kicks the ass of my old 8c/16t (which means I probably wasn't ever using those 16t, and didn't need it to begin with)

 

[Piri1974]

Not to take away from your point, but a lot of them are living in places with bad electrical infrastructure and possibly high electricity costs.

You do have an interesting point there. I agree.
But there are more than 2 types of countries, not just the rich and the poor.

I probably still oversimplify of course, but let’s say that there are 3 types of countries:

1. The developing countries with low wages and no decent infrastructure.
2. The rich countries with high wages and good infrastructure.
3. Other developed countries with good infrastructure but where the average income is way lower than in the West.

1. In the developing countries, many people probably only have a smartphone with internet access, and no computer at all. And unfortunately many people there cannot even afford a smartphone.
2. Then there are the ‘rich’ countries where people can afford Core i and Ryzen PCs.
3. Then there are other modern countries, but where the average income is just low, below 1000 Dollars and sometimes even below 500 Dollars a month.

Some Eastern European countries fall into that category:
They are modern, their infrastructure is more or less as good as ours, they have cheap electricity, they have wired internet all over the place except maybe in the smallest of towns, but that is no different here in the West, etcetera.
But so these countries have modern electricity and communications infrastructures and other types of infrastructure so they ARE developed countries, it's just that the average income there is a lot lower than in the West.

Many people over there may only have a smarthpone for internet access as well.
A smartphone is okay for internet access, but as soon as you need something to run an office suite, byebye smartphone.
In these countries, you will find a big market for second hand PCs and laptops, or the cheapest types of new PCs with older generation parts.
There you have a market for older generation CPUs or low power 10 Watt CPUs, either new or second hand.
I you live in such a country as a family father/mother and you want to give your children a PC with Office and internet access:
Better an old generation family PC than NO family PC, right?


So, we should not laugh at Intel for launching an old CPU again.
They probably have found a very good reason, and a market somewhere for it.

The AMD Phenom II would probably get replaced with a Ryzen 5 Pro, if I could buy a 3400G version (preferably new, but nobody will sell me one).

I wish you good luck in finding the CPU you want.
Indeed, even we have older generation machines.
I already told you about my older A8-9600 which I'm perfectly happy with, although I do have a much more modern Core i5-8400 Coffee Lake cpu too.
And I have an old Wolfdale dual core Celeron - my dads’s old pc - which I just let run scientific calculations for the ‘Mapping Cancer Markers’ project from World Community Grid.
And hey, my PC at work is still a Wolfdale Pentium… I work for the government.
And then - I almost forgot - I have even 2 tiny Atom machines which I use as HTPC:
2 mini pcs which I bought on Aliexpress for not even 150 Dollars a piece.
Add a high capacity SD card, and there you have a mini HTPC.
I have 2 old tube style tv sets, so for me 720p resolution is perfect.
Atoms are good enough as a simple media player. I would not use them for other tasks though... too slow to my taste.

Have a happy Sunday;
Carl

 

[bit_user]

Have a happy Sunday;

You too! Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I think we agree that these CPUs still can still serve a consumer market.

If you step back and think about it, it does seem weird how the greatest PC from a few years ago are now somehow bad. I dunno, but I always have difficulty getting rid of something that still works for its purpose.

I wish you good luck in finding the CPU you want.

Thanks. It's because I believe in ECC memory, which AMD doesn't support on their consumer APUs. If you want to use ECC on an APU, it has to be a Ryzen Pro, but they won't sell those retail, and nobody is even reselling any as OEM versions. To get one, I either have to buy a complete PC or get a used chip on ebay that someone ripped out of one. Except even then, the latest you can find are the previous generation.

Anyway, I'm not really in a rush to upgrade the Phenom II. It had trouble booting, recently (it's my main fileserver, so that was scary), but I think that was just caused by a software update.

I have 2 old tube style tv sets,

I had a CRT HDTV until about 5 years ago. I don't watch much TV, though - pretty much only movies and a bit of news. I have no plans on upgrading to 4k.

I shouldn't admit this, but I still have a CRT monitor. It's a nice one, but a bit blurry when I turn it on. It burns a lot of power (up to 250 W at full brightness, I think). I'm finally about to replace it, this year. I'm eyeing a 27" 10-bit QHD 144 Hz LCD. If I keep it anywhere near as long, I think I'll want most or all of those features. I was waiting for OLED, but gave up a few years ago.

 

[TJ Hooker]

1. original zen had the same IPC as broadwell, which is about 12% faster IPC then haswell; meaning original zen was 15% faster then this original Intel chip, original zen could get to 4.2ghz which is just 3% slower then 4.3ghz, meaning original zen at 4.2ghz was ~9% faster then haswell at 4.3ghz.
2. zen+ was an 8% improvement over original zen which means it was 17% faster then haswell (4.2ghz vs 4.3ghz

Broadwell had a 5% or less IPC gain compared to Haswell. IPC of Zen+ was only ~3% higher than Zen, outside of one or two specific workloads.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9482/intel-broadwell-pt2-overclocking-ipc/3
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12625/amd-second-generation-ryzen-7-2700x-2700-ryzen-5-2600x-2600/4

But I do agree that getting something like an Athlon 200GE makes way more sense than this Pentium for any regular PC.