Intel Un-Discontinues Pentium G3420 ‘Haswell’ CPU
by Anton Shilov on December 9, 2019 4:00 PM EST
As spotted by ComputerBase.de, in a rare event, Intel has canceled its plan to EOL one of its low-end Haswell-generation processors, resuming processor shipments for the foreseeable future. Curiously, the change in plans comes less than two weeks after Intel first began the process of discontinuing the processor. And while Intel does not publish their the detailed rationale behind their decisions in their product change notifications, given the company's ongoing low-end CPU shortage, it's fair to say that Intel needs all of the low-end CPUs it can get at the moment.
The processor in question is Intel’s Pentium G3420, which offers two Haswell architecture CPU cores (no HyperThreading) running at 3.20 GHz, as well as the company’s HD integrated graphics. The 22nm chip is compatible with the widely available LGA1151 infrastructure that supports 53 W CPUs. As a part of Intel’s Haswell family, the chip was originally meant to be used inside low-end desktops, and it has also found its way into devices such as NAS boxes.
Keeping in mind that most embedded versions of Haswell CPUs have been EOLed, this one could be an answer to demand from that market. Alternatively, ComputerBase believes that the change in plans is a stop-gap for Intel, so that they have some kind of low-end Core-based Pentium processor to offer OEMs who are currently being starved of suitable Skylake chips.
The statement from Intel reads as follows:
This revision supersedes the prior EOL notice and is intended to inform customers that they do not need to do anything more on their end for last orders and should plan on this product being available as usual. Please disregard the notice of the product End of Life as shared in prior communications and note that this product will continue to be available for orders as usual. Intel is not pursuing EOL of this product at this time.
Related Reading:
- Thecus Announces Two New Rackmount NAS Servers
- Devil’s Canyon Review: Intel Core i7-4790K and i5-4690K
Sources: Intel, ComputerBase
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peevee - Tuesday, December 10, 2019 - link
"They had planned for their mainstream production all to be on 10 nm, by now"With 2 year cadence, it should have been all on 7nm by now.
eek2121 - Monday, December 9, 2019 - link
Intel likely has a ton of spare 22nm capacity, and thanks to 14nm being at capacity and the focus on 10nm, the only direction they can go is larger. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Intel is in an incredibly awkward position, more than most people can even begin to fathom. To build a new 14nm fab when 10/7nm production is so close is foolhardy. Yet they are getting completely locked out of the market at this point. Even Dell, a die hard Intel only company, is currently validating AMD designs due to Intel 14nm shortages. If Intel cannot execute 10nm or 7nm soon, they are at risk for a severe downturn in CPU sales.lightningz71 - Tuesday, December 10, 2019 - link
There is no risk in a downturn in sales for Intel. They can currently, and for the near term can continue to sell EVERY SINGLE CHIP they produce at a premium. The ONLY thing they risk right now is revenue numbers from being able to command a price premium at the top of their stack (as seen by some of the price drops on their 10X series chips) and from lost opportunity sales in the mid to lower end market as the production that would be supplying those processors is still being used by higher end products.Longer term, if they choose to not be price competitive, they risk market lock out, but, we're talking several years for that to even be worth debating. Intel is capacity constrained and has the ability to control demand AT WILL through pricing. They choose not to for current products and prefer to be where they are. It will take a lot more than a delay in 10/7nm and capacity constraints to break their stranglehold on the OEM market, which is still their bread and butter. What their constraints ARE doing, though, is allowing their OEMs to see the benefit in risking money on developing and validating products based on AMD processors. We saw some of this before for the Opteron server processors when they were competitive, and we saw some in the pre-construction days.
All Intel has to do is focus on their issues, price competitively for a few quarters to years, and once they get production straightened out, they will be able to regain control of the market easily enough. AMD is rising high on one thing, core count. That is a road of decreasing returns. Eventually, you have too many cores to keep busy, especially in the consumer space, and most will just sit there doing nothing 99% of the time. If that buys AMD enough time to get the rest of their processors on par with the Intel cores (with respect to IPC in all workloads), then AMD will be able to stay in the game. Given their progress from Zen,+ and Zen 2, it looks like AMD may just be able to pull that off. However, don't expect Intel to not continue to improve their cores as well. There's a lot that Intel hasn't produced yet that they have had in development for a long time simply because they have had their core development married to their process technology for so long.
The next few years will be quite interesting in the market.
Korguz - Tuesday, December 10, 2019 - link
lightningz71 " They can currently, and for the near term can continue to sell EVERY SINGLE CHIP they produce at a premium " to bad that cant make very many because they were NOT expecting to have to make more then 4 cores for the mainstream market, and only make 6+ cores for the HEDT and server markets. and if you call selling their top desktop chip for 1k LESS then the top chip it replaces a premium price, then there is something wrong."Intel is capacity constrained and has the ability to control demand AT WILL through pricing" WRONG, for 2 reasons, Intel CAN'T charge too much for their chips, because that would push people to AMD who has a very competitive product now, and 2, they cant charge to little, as their investors and shareholders, would have their heads, so explain how they can " control demand AT WILL through pricing ".. id like to see you try.
" It will take a lot more than a delay in 10/7nm and capacity constraints to break their stranglehold on the OEM market" of course it would, cause they can always go back to bribing and threats to keep OEMs from also offering AMDs products :-)
" AMD is rising high on one thing, core count" wrong again... they are also better then intel in IPC, power usage and performance per dollar. " on par with the Intel cores (with respect to IPC in all workloads) " um, they are already there in regards to IPC, AMDs lower clocked cpus compete VERY well with intels higher clocked cpus, and thats ALL intel has left to compete with, their higher clocked cpus that keep any performance advantage they have left.
" There's a lot that Intel hasn't produced yet that they have had in development for a long time simply because they have had their core development married to their process technology for so long. " um yea ok sure.. then explain why intel has stagnated the market for so long, milking the current architecture for 10 generations now ? why didnt that back port their next gen architecture to 14nm by now ? to regain the performance they once had vs Zen ??
JayNor - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link
This chip was already 22nm. This update was just to correct an error in an EOL notice.JayNor - Wednesday, December 11, 2019 - link
This is the Intel response story.https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-we-arent-s...
kallinteris - Monday, December 9, 2019 - link
why would OEMs buy this instead of AMD athlon 300g?kallinteris - Monday, December 9, 2019 - link
3000g*sandtitz - Monday, December 9, 2019 - link
If the OEM has an existing product that fills the needs, then why change?Changing to an AMD or even a newer Intel design would need to have the product system board re-designed, the cooling would need a re-design; tooling and assembly would need changes; the software would probably need some programming (Intel graphics -> AMD graphics); the new product would need QA validation; Stocking another model would need more warehouse space since you'd also need to stock spare parts. All this costs money and if the existing system doesn't benefit from the extra grunt of a newer CPU - why bother?
Of course if you're about to design something new - perhaps the Athlon would be better product. (along with many other CPUs)
eek2121 - Monday, December 9, 2019 - link
I agree with most of your post except the driver part. AMD/Intel writes the drivers, not the OEM.