What Products Use Intel 10nm? SuperFin and 10++ Demystified
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 25, 2020 9:00 AM ESTThe AnandTech Decoder Ring for Intel 10nm
The reason why I’m writing about this topic is because it is all a bit of a mess. Intel is a company so large, with many different business units each with its own engineers and internal marketing personnel/product managers, that a single change made by the HQ team takes time to filter down to the other PR teams, but also filter back through the engineers, some of which make press-facing appearances. That’s before any discussions as to whether the change is seen as positive or negative by those affected.
I reached out to Intel to get their official decoder ring for the 10++ to new SuperFin naming. The official response I received was in itself confusing, and the marketing person I speak to wasn’t decoding from the first 2018 naming change, but from the original pre-2017 naming scheme. Between my contacts and I we spoke over the phone so I could hear what they wanted to tell me and so I could tell them what I felt were the reasons for the changes. Some of the explanations I made (such as Intel not wanting to acknowledge Ice Lake 10nm is different to Cannon Lake 10nm, or that Ice Lake 10nm is called that way to hide the fact that Cannon Lake 10nm didn’t work) were understandably left with a no comment.
However, I now have an official decoder ring for you, to act as a reference for both users and Intel’s own engineers alike.
| AnandTech's Decoder Ring for Intel's 10nm | ||||
| Product | 2020+ | First Update |
Original |
|
| Cannon Lake | - | - | 10nm | |
| Ice Lake Ice Lake-SP Lakefield (compute) Snow Ridge Elkhart Lake |
10nm | 10nm | 10+ | |
| Tiger Lake SG1 DG1 |
10nm Superfin |
10+ | 10++ | |
| Alder Lake First Xe-HP GPU Sapphire Rapids |
10nm Enhanced SuperFin |
10++ | 10+++ | |
For clarity, 10nm Superfin is often abbreviated to 10SF, and 10nm Enhanced Superfin to 10ESF.
Moving forward, Intel’s communications team is committed to explaining everything in terms of 10nm, 10SF, and 10ESF. I have been told that the process of moving all internal documents away from the pre-2017 naming to the 2020 naming is already underway.
We reached out for Intel for a comment for this article:
It is widely acknowledged within the industry that there is inconsistency and confusion in [our] nanometer nomenclature. Going forward, we will refer the next generation 10nm products as 10nm SuperFin technology-based products.
My take is that whoever had the bright idea to knock Ice Lake down from 10+ to 10 (and then Tiger from 10++ to 10+ etc.), in order to protect the company from addressing issues with the Cannon Lake product, drastically failed at predicting the fallout that this name change would bring. Sometimes a company should accept they didn't score as well as they did, admit the hit, and move on, rather than try and cover it up. So much more time and effort has been lost in terms of communications between the press and Intel, or the press and engineers, or even between the engineers and Intel's own communications team. Even the basic understanding of dealing with that change has been difficult, to the detriment of the press trying to report on Intel’s technology, and likely even on the financial side as investors try to understand what’s going on.
But, truth be told, I’m glad that Intel moved away from the ++++ nomenclature. It allows the company to now easily name future manufacturing node technologies that aren’t just for pure logic performance, which may be vital if Intel ever wants to become a foundry player again.
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AMDSuperFan - Friday, September 25, 2020 - link
All that matters is being able to multitask on as many things as possible. If I run a docker instance, that is one thing. If I use Cortana, which I very much enjoy using for my personal assistance, then that is a second thing. AMD is very good at releasing chips that do lots of things at once. It doesn't matter if they do each thing a lot slower as long as they can do many things. I am looking forward to all the games that can use hundreds of cores at once. Maybe a good chess game? Then AMD will be the best at chess games.dotjaz - Friday, September 25, 2020 - link
You won't be able to buy any consumer/prosumer CPU with beyond 128 cores in the next 10 years. Mark my words.I doubt 96-core CPU would be available anytime soon.
AMDSuperFan - Saturday, September 26, 2020 - link
AMD have proven that at any time they can release processors with many more slower cores than any other company. 200 or 400 cores will be no problem. Would you buy a processor that ran everything perfectly that was 10 cores or would you buy one with 400 cores just to say you are the best at doing most things slowly, but many things very fast? PKZIP will be no problem for the 400 core AMD chip while the competitors will be chugging away. The 200 core games will be very good.wumpus - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Once Intel cancels Xe, expect them to try again with a "x86 GPU". Presumably something like 96 Atom cores with AVX512 or something.And it will work just as well as every other time they tried it (for values of "they" which also include Sony thinking at first that cell could replace a GPU).
Putting 96 cores on a chip is one thing. Building the network fabric to hold it together is another. And supplying the I/O is the worst part. The only way this is happening is if you could stack the CPU on top of all the RAM, but that has mostly been given up.
ilkhan - Saturday, September 26, 2020 - link
Those things don't need an entire core to themselves. Having 8-16 cores is plenty for even a power user's desktop, until you get in serious multi threaded workloads, A/V editing/rendering, for example.Samus - Saturday, September 26, 2020 - link
95% of the consumer market doesn't want "200 cores to do 200 things" they want adequate performance to do basic things with 12+ hours of battery life, small footprint and a lot power bill.dotjaz - Friday, September 25, 2020 - link
Keep hallucinating. There won't be a consumer 32-core CPU any time soon, even for Threadripper which is intended for creator/prosumers 128-core isn't on the horizon anytime soon, let alone 200+ cores.Memory bandwidth, thermal and cost constraints simply won't allow it.
inighthawki - Friday, September 25, 2020 - link
>> There won't be a consumer 32-core CPU any time soon, even for ThreadripperThe 3970x is literally a 32 core variant of Threadripper.
JlHADJOE - Tuesday, October 6, 2020 - link
lol read his post again and realize you're quoting him the same way journalists quote Trump.Before the comma:
>> There won't be a consumer 32-core CPU any time soon
After the comma:
>> even for Threadripper which is intended for creator/prosumers 128-core isn't on the horizon anytime soon
Sure the sentence is a bit run-on, but he's clearly making a distinction between consumer which I assume is Ryzen, and prosumer which is Threadripper.
Spunjji - Friday, September 25, 2020 - link
Please, SOMEBODY, take this Turing Test-failing account offline.