Intel is looking to jump past prior woes with its 10nm processor architecture to a smaller, more efficient 7nm or 5nm design in an effort to compete against rival AMD‘s latest 7nm CPU and GPU offerings.
“Look, [10nm] just isn’t going to be the best node that Intel has ever had,” Intel CFO George Davis admitted to analysts at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media, and Telecom conference, according to a report on German publication Computer Base. “It’s going to be less productive than 14[nm], less productive than 22[nm].”
Intel’s first 10nm processors, called Ice Lake came out in late 2019, but only for laptops. The follow-up 10nm processors, Tiger Lake, are set for later this year. But for processors that require more power, such as on desktop or on H-series laptops, Intel has been sticking with 14nm.
Despite admitting that the 10nm process was not the best fit for Intel, Davis did say that the company is seeing improvements. “And we expect to start the 7nm period with a much better profile of performance over that starting at the end of 2021,” he said.
Intel hopes that its jump to a 7nm design will deliver much better performance, and the first processors should arrive sometime in 2021.
Beyond that, Intel is even looking to a smaller 5nm architecture. Intel has been making big investments into more efficient designs, and the company’s race to 5nm may have a negative mpact on financial performance, PC Games N reported.
Still, Intel is making these investments in an effort to “regain leadership” in this space from AMD, which had achieved 7nm ahead of Intel’s release timeline.
“We were at a time when in order to regain process leadership, we had to accelerate the overlap between 10[nm and] 7[nm], and then 7[nm] and 5[nm],” Davis said at the conference. “And so the cost that you’re absorbing, starting in particularly 2021, you’ve got this intersection of a performance of 10, the investment in 7 and we’re also willing to start an investment of 5, all of those elements just combine to impact gross margin.”
In addition to AMD’s Zen 2 architecture, Qualcomm had also achieved 7nm for its Snapdragon processors. Though the majority of Snapdragon chips are found in smartphones, Qualcomm’s silicon is also used in ARM-powered Windows PCs like Samsung’s Galaxy Book S and Microsoft’s Surface Pro X.
Given the widely reported delays Intel experienced when it began its transition to 10nm and the silicon shortages, accelerating the transition to 7nm and 5nm could slow market demand, as consumers may hold off on upgrading their existing systems while they wait for the next best silicon on the roadmap.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
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Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.