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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rbarone69 - Sunday, September 27, 2020 - link
hahaha I thought the very exact same thing!MrSpadge - Friday, September 25, 2020 - link
Not sure, but I have a slight suspicion you may be joking here...Spunjji - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
It's kind of agonising that people keep writing serious responses to this comment section's most obvious troll.supdawgwtfd - Monday, October 12, 2020 - link
Why do you think he is still here?He gets hits. Hits means and revenue. Which of course means money.
Anandtech's owners love him.
Samus - Saturday, September 26, 2020 - link
You'd be crazy to think either of these companies (AMD or Intel) will exist in their current forms in just a few years. x86 needs to die. Any legacy requirements can be appropriately emulated using virtual machines or code morphing on alternative architectures.The disturbing part is AMD and Intel are seemingly in denial over this because neither have any ARM or alternative IP-designs in their pipeline for the next 5 years. Seriously in 5 years ARM will have 50% of the market and you can bet that'll shift other consumer segments currently dominated by x86 (such as game consoles)
Showtime - Saturday, September 26, 2020 - link
Emulators aren't the most efficient way of doing things, but it's hard to deny where computing seems to be heading. Neither will abandon it until they have to, and even then there will be a market to support x86 for decades after.Spunjji - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
What form do you think they'll exist in, and why?What's your reason for predicting a 50% shift to ARM, and in which market?
mdriftmeyer - Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - link
ARM will be the Albatross around Nvidia's throat.grant3 - Friday, October 2, 2020 - link
"x86 needs to die." Why?Serious question. I've been hearing this same line for over 20 years.
But still haven't heard any reason that actually solves a practical problem.
It's always some variant of "it's old" "it requires legacy support" "intel is evil" "RISC is faster" yadda yadda. Basically it's complaining about imaginary problems that engineers have mitigated into oblivion years ago, or an idealogical conviction that immature/imaginary technologies will magically avoid the compromise and tradeoffs that every mature technology has endured.
"ARM will have 50% of the market"
50% of which market? There's already billions of ARM devices out there in the wild. they're wildly popular. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more ARM cpus active in the world than there are x86 cpus active in the world.
ARM is proving itself successful, x86 is remaining popular, and technology solutions are better than ever despite (or because of) this current coexistence.
"Any legacy requirements can be appropriately emulated using virtual machines or code morphing on alternative architectures."
This has been the mating call of x86 replacement advocates for decades, including the inventor of x86 itself back in the 90s, and none of them proved economical. So while you may be right this time, I'm not going to bet on you being more prescient than the thousands of engineers who were funded by billions of dollar across numerous projects in the past.
Whenever x86 sunsets, whatever new software is written at the time will coincidentally be written to support its replacement architecture.
throAU - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Nah, ARM is coming. Apple are leading the way but the others will jump ship pretty rapidly when it is shown that no, you don't need to pay both the x86 monetary and technical debt tax to be competitive.