News - Intel launches 22nm node with 3D transistors

[HEXUS]

The Ivy Bridge generation of chips will be the first to use ‘Tri-Gate’ technology.

Read more.

[Terbinator]

After watching the video, i can say i'm somewhat intrigued what performance benefits IVB will bring.

Slightly off-topic however, and I'm no physicist, can we not just add more 'channels' per transistor to flow through a single gate?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So will we need new motherboards to run Ivy Bridge??

I am more interested in Haswell TBH!

[Blackmage]

After watching the video, i can say i'm somewhat intrigued what performance benefits IVB will bring.

Slightly off-topic however, and I'm no physicist, can we not just add more 'channels' per transistor to flow through a single gate?

I would presume that it would take more space, which we would have less of due to the shrinkage to 22nm.

what has impressed me is the whole tri-gate technique, which should mean more efficient data transfer and better power management; clever stuff

all we need to do now is replace silicon with diamond!

[Terbinator]

Slightly off-topic however, and I'm no physicist, can we not just add more 'channels' per transistor to flow through a single gate?

*Ahem*:



http://www.anandtech.com/show/4313/i...ing-in-2h-2011

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wonder how long this will take to filter down to the sub £150 market??

[Terbinator]

Not long i would image, IVB is a straight shrink so not 'much' by way of design change. If they're going after the low-power market with this you would expect low cost parts as well.

[Singh400]

I don't claim to be an expert on this, but even I realise this is potential amazing. Go Intel. I was planning to build an Ivy Bridge rig anyway, but this has sealed the deal for me. Even more so that they should be out by end of year!

Anandtech have a nice write up of this (as always) there are also a few YouTubes videos worth watching about it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not long i would image, IVB is a straight shrink so not 'much' by way of design change. If their going after the low-power market with this you would expect low cost parts as well.

I suspect Intel will probably look at decreasing the die size too at least with the mainstream processors as it will increase their margins.

I wonder if the ramp up for the consumer market will happen with some of the lower end CPUs?? The socket 1156 Core i3 processors were the first 32NM consumer desktop CPUs AFAIK.

I don't claim to be an expert on this, but even I realise this is potential amazing. Go Intel. I was planning to build an Ivy Bridge rig anyway, but this has sealed the deal for me. Even more so that they should be out by end of year!

Anandtech have a nice write up of this (as always) there are also a few YouTubes videos worth watching about it.

Haswell will probably blow it out of the water TBH! Unless a production process is really bugged then the Intel Tocks tend to see the greater performance boosts.

[Singh400]

Haswell will probably blow it out of the water TBH! Unless a production process is really bugged then the Intel Tocks tend to see the greater performance boosts.

Well that's obvious isn't it? It's a bit like saying Nehalem is going to be way better than Conroe when Conroe came out.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well that's obvious isn't it? It's a bit like saying Nehalem is going to be way better than Conroe when Conroe came out.

But was Wolfdale much better than Conroe though?? The main improvements that Wolfdale brought was slightly improved IPC,slightly higher stock clockspeeds, much lower power consumption and smaller dies. Intel could probably have easily made Wolfdale faster by ramping up the stock clockspeeds and not reducing the die size.

A smaller die means potentially higher margins and lower power consumption means cheaper and smaller heatsinks and lower cost motherboards.

However,I can see that the main advantage of this technology will mean Intel will be in a better position to compete better with ARM based devices. The next generation Atom is probably going to have much lower power consumption as a result.

Edit!!

AFAIK,Sandy Bridge E will be 32NM too. I suspect that Ivy Bridge could have a much larger part of the chip devoted to the IGP.

[krazy_olie]

Well whilst this is a "tock" I think this will be the performance change greater than normal.

It's a bit of a double wammy. Die shrinks provide improvements anyway, a completely new lower power transistor technology will also run much faster. Per clock it will be faster and clock speeds too will be faster.

This is all theory though, the intel marketing people may decide to not eek all the potential out of it straight away!

Supposedly Ivy bridge should run on sandy bridge motherboards, though some new features won't be enabled (probably nothing you'd notice).

[GheeTsar]

This is one of the most exciting bit of tech news I've read for ages. Getting smaller dies, increased clocks and reduced power all in one is potentially like the equivalent of skipping a whole die shrink node in performance terms.

What concerns me is how strong the competition is out there. Unless the FX Zambezi chips are really superb, there's no motivation for Intel to either (a) release Ivy Bridge quickly or (b) really try and get the maximum performance out of the chip instead of increasing profitability by reducing the chip size with a moderate performance increase.

It's also a worry that TSMC isn't planning on moving to this tech for reportedly 5 years or so with the advent of the 14nm process. That could hurt AMD and Nvidia, especially with on chip graphics cores getting better all the time.

[Defiant]

I have to say that I keep holding out longer on upgrading my rig the more I hear about Ive Bridge. TBH I want a CPU/Board that comes with PCI-E 3.0, if it comes with this improvement I will be waiting until I can get both in my next upgrade.

I just cant seem to find anything just now that hammers my Q6600 at 3GHz with the radeon 6970 to badly.

[Terbinator]

IVB is both PCI-e 3.0 and USB3 AFAIK.

[Defiant]

Well its looking like Ive Bridge is my next upgrade point!