TSMC Expected to Begin 'A14' 5nm Chip Production in Second Quarter

[SRLMJ23]

Traditionally that's been the case, and was also set to be the case with Intel's original 10nm design. Unfortunately what tripped them up was transistor density (from an interview with Brian Krzanich) so in order to get 10nm working at all, that was scrapped and what we now have is basically just Kaby Lake refresh scaled down to 10nm. There's little if any density increase, just higher clock speeds and other general refinements like they applied to the various 14nm designs. That's why Ice lake is pretty underwhelming and more comparable to Kaby Lake over Skylake than Broadwell over Haswell. There is a rumour of Intel trying to short shift to 7nm, whether that will finally come with a significant density increase and the sort of generational improvements we were used to before 2015 is yet to be seen. I'm going to be in the market for a new gaming laptop in the next year or two, so I'd certainly like to see Intel underway again, now they've (just about) managed to refloat themselves off the 10nm rock they hit.

What are the Intel chips that are coming out soon (so I hear) that are going to be 10-Core, 5Ghz, and is that going to be the base clock speed, or Turbo-Boost?

I do not know why so many people are glad that Intel is not doing that great right now, good competition is good for consumers, and everyone here knows that Intel chips are going to be in Macs for a while still, especially higher end Macs. So to me, good Intel chips are just going to make our Macs better.

Apple will never (in my opinion) switch to AMD chips, so that is just a dream of some people on this forum.

The way I see it, Apple, when they do release an A-Series Mac, will start with a MacBook or MacBook Air and that will probably be a lower end option for people who do not need the processing power of an Intel chip. In that scenario I see Apple having two types of MacBook/MacBook Air's...one with A-Series chips, and one with Intel chips.

I think we are a long way off from MacBook Pro's getting A-Series chips, and even farther away from any of the desktop Macs getting them.

Synthetic benchmark scores like GeekBench do not translate to real-world usage, as most of you know. Intel chips are still the best option vs. A-Series as of now (since AMD will never happen) if you need some serious performance.

Just my opinions obviously!

Edit: I do wonder if there is any way Apple could incorporate an A-Series "booster" chip along side the main Intel CPU, especially to help with Intels integrated graphics, because they suck. That would be cool as hell!

 

[IG88]

What are the Intel chips that are coming out soon (so I hear) that are going to be 10-Core, 5Ghz, and is that going to be the base clock speed, or Turbo-Boost?

The 10900K 10-core desktop CPU is still going to be on 14nm. 5GHz would be "turbo" but if you have the cooling, you can run 5GHz indefinitely.

The whole "turbo" thing is mainly about laptops that can't dissipate the heat of all cores running at "turbo" speed for more than short bursts.

 

[kafka27]

For reference, a silicon atom is 0.2 nanometers across which means that the thickness here is 25 silicon atoms. How much further can we go?

That's Van der Waals radius: 0,210 nm the atomic radius is 0,111 nanometers.

 

[cmaier]

That's Van der Waals radius: 0,210 nm the atomic radius is 0,111 nanometers.

Plus there’s a bunch of germanium, phosphorus, and boron in there

 

[techwhiz]

TSMC is 2.5 years ahead of Samsung Semiconductor Co. and 7+ years ahead of intel fabs.

2.5 years and 7 year?
I don't know where you get your numbers from.
7 years ago TSMC didn't have anything equivalent to 10nm Intel process.

 

[0924487]

2.5 years and 7 year?
I don't know where you get your numbers from.
7 years ago TSMC didn't have anything equivalent to 10nm Intel process.

you forgot to add the exponential function.