Intel – SemiAnalysis

Amazon Graviton 3 Uses Chiplets & Advanced Packaging To Commoditize High Performance CPUs | The First PCIe 5.0 And DDR5 Server CPU

December 2, 2021December 2, 2021 Dylan Patel 0 Comments Amazon, AMD, AWS, AWS EBS, AWS Elastic Block Storage., AWS Nitro, DDR5, Graviton 2, Graviton 3, Graviton2, Graviton3, Intel, Neoverse N1, Neoverse N2, Neoverse V1, Nitro, PCIe 5.0

Shots are being fired at merchant silicon.
Amazon’s Graviton3 completely commoditizes generalized CPU compute while also bringing advanced packaging, PCIe 5.0, and DDR5 to the server market ~6 months before Intel and AMD.
Server and rack level system architecture choices propel Graviton 3 to new heights in cost per unit of compute.
There’s something special about the packaging behind the paywall.

Intel Logic

Intel Betting The Farm – Shrinking Business, Margins Down For Few Years, But Aggressively Investing $40B-$43B A Year And More With Subsidies

October 22, 2021October 22, 2021 Dylan Patel 29 Comments

Intel could follow the path of many other American goliaths such as IBM and General Electric. A slow slide to irrelevancy, spinning off business, and bringing shame to what was once pride for American ingenuity. Instead of that conservative route, they are going to put the metal to the floor, spend every dime Intel makes on investing in more manufacturing, design, and in general catching up in technology.

Apple Intel Logic Samsung TSMC

TSMC 3nm Wafer Shipments Pushed Into Q1 2023, 2.5 Years After N5 | TSMC 2nm, Samsung 2nm, And Intel 20A Battle It Out In 2025

October 14, 2021October 14, 2021 Dylan Patel 2 Comments

SemiAnalysis has been hearing murmurings about TSMC’s N3 having poor yields, poor metal stack performance, being very expensive, and being too late for Apple’s 2022 iPhone. These can’t be confirmed, but we can confirm that TSMC N3 is now shipping in Q1 2023.
The hiccup on N3 brings many questions about TSMC’s competitive positioning versus Intel 20A and Samsung 2nm. Both these nodes are very aggressive and aimed at getting back into a competitive position against TSMC. Intel and Samsung even claim the nodes will bring leadership.

Aehr Intel Packaging Silicon Photonics

Aehr Multi-Wafer Level Burn-in Test for Silicon Carbide and Silicon Photonics Applications

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 Dylan Patel 1 Comment Aehr, laser burn-in, photonics burn-in, Silicon Carbide, Wafer level burn-in

Test intensity for silicon carbide and photonics is very high due to extreme operating ranges. Wafer level burn in could transform the test life cycle for semiconductors. Major wins such as On Semiconductor and Intel validate this.

Intel Logic Packaging Qualcomm Silicon Photonics

Intel Grossly Exaggerates Foundry “Wins” With Qualcomm And Amazon, There Are No Deals For Manufacturing Chips

July 29, 2021August 3, 2021 Dylan Patel 0 Comments 20A, Amazon, IFS, Intel, Intel Custom Foundry, Packaging, Qualcomm

Intel touted huge wins with Qualcomm and Amazon for their foundry business, but a deeper investigation reveals there are no chips deals penned. Intel will only package for Amazon, and Qualcomm is only evaluating the technology.

Intel Logic Nvidia Silicon Photonics TSMC

Intel’s Trojan Horse into the Foundry Business | Co-packaged Silicon Photonics is Intel’s Path Forward for IDM 2.0

June 11, 2021August 3, 2021 Dylan Patel 3 Comments Barefoot, Barefoot Tofino, Co-packaged Optics, ICF, IDM 2.0, Intel, Intel Custom Foundry, Nvidia, Optical Trancievers, Photonic Engine, Silicon Photonics, TensTorrent, Tofinio 2, Wormhole

Intel is struggling against TSMC, AMD, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, etc.
They have a potential ace which would allow them to remain at the heart of datacenter and force industry dependency.
Co-packaged silicon photonics is Intel’s Trojan Horse into the foundry business!

Intel Logic

Google New Custom Silicon Replaces 10 Million Intel CPUs | Google Argos VPU

June 2, 2021August 3, 2021 Dylan Patel 0 Comments Argos, AV1, Custom Silicon, EDA, Google, H264, H265, Intel, Nvidia, Skylake, Taffel, VCU, VP9, YouTube

Google’s New Custom Argos Silicon Replaces 10 Million Intel CPUs! The Argos VPU allows them to enable VP9 across all of their services. In the process of building this chip, Google even created their own EDA tool called Taffel!

Intel Logic

Intel Icelake Server Die Size & Floorplan Inefficiencies Revealed

November 12, 2020August 3, 2021 Dylan Patel 4 Comments 10nm, 38 Cores, 38C, 42 Cores, 42C, AMD, Graviton 3, H100, Icelake, Icelake server, Icelake SP, Milan, Nvidia H100

This post was based on the assumption that XCC would be 42C. It is now revealed to be 40C. The