Please can you customise this X86 CPU - I’d like it to be smaller, cooler, cheaper, more secure and more powerful please, and if it could use the ARM instruction set that’d be great. Thanks
This is what AMD has been doing for years under their CEO, Dr. Lisa Su: building custom solutions for their clients. See the CPUs in the past couple of generations of Playstation and Xbox as well as thr recently announced Valve Steam Deck – all feature custom X64 chips suited to the needs of those platforms. So, once again, Intel is playing catch up to AMD.
To add some history - AMD's semi-custom segment dates back prior to Su's CEO seat. It was initiated in 2012-2013 under CEO Rory Read [1], although Su was heavily involved in it back then too (as SVP, and eventually as COO, before taking over as CEO in 2014). It ended up primarily targeting game consoles, though it claimed residual wins in other markets too.
It turned out to be an excellent move at the time, as it proved to be a bit of a lifeline during AMD's rough years. And modern-day AMD continues executing on it well.
I also agree w/your general point - given AMD's history doing this kind of thing, it's tough to see what Intel could do in this segment that AMD couldn't do better.
> One of the key elements of Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy is the company's newly created Intel Foundry Services (IFS) group that will manufacture chips for others. This group can operate as a classic foundry making any chips its clients want: Arm-based system-on-chips, RISC-V-based controllers, tensor processing units (TPUs), or graphics processing units (GPUs), just to name a few options.
> But Intel can naturally add a unique sauce to its IFS offering: highly competitive general-purpose x86 cores as well as an extremely broad portfolio of its silicon-proven IPs. Earlier this year Intel said that it was in discussion with over 100 of potential IFS customers and recently it revealed that about 1/3 of them were interested in custom x86-based SoCs.
> "Of the 100+ customers, I'd say about a third of them are interested in that x86ish of our ecosystem," said Gelsinger.
1/3 of _potential Intel foundry clients_ want x86. Of course there are plenty of companies investigating the new foundry option coming onboard with Samsung/TSMC lead times being what they are that have no interest in porting their products to x86.
> Put another way two thirds are not interested in x86.
We aren't talking about Intel's customers in general, but those who are using or planning to use Intel's new fab services. In other words, 1/3 of those interested in creating their own chip are also interested in custom x86 design.
> Sorry to say that this article reads like an Intel press release.
This isn't an article but an interview with Intel's CEO. As Intel officially as it gets
Tomshardware has a history of being basically that, a mouthpiece for Intel. Back in the days of AMDs thunderbird, opteron, etc., I remember tomshardware having some obvious bias that made other outlets like anandtech look super trustworthy by comparison.
They also want them to have guaranteed availability for years. Anyone not making PCs isn't planning to redesign their boards every few months as some new chip/upgrade comes available, and they don't have the budget for it. Give me reason to think I'll be able to buy this CPU for the next 50 years at a reasonable price, in whatever quantity and I'll be interested.
Lower power consumption would be nice too. We don't always have mains power.
I'm sort of curious what the "long-lived embeddable CPU" of this era will be.
I can go to Mouser right now and buy a pin-compatible 80186 right now in quantity of 1. You can even order a new 8088 from Renesas, but it says they're back-ordered til next February.
I've seen 386s and 486s manufactured recently enough to have the "newer" Intel logo (the one without the dropped "e") which implies well into the 21st century.
With modern product lines, I'm not so sure. The Atom-class products that seem most appealing for embedded use tend to have a very short shelf life (in those terms). I wonder if they're saddled by a dual market obligation-- I suspect Intel wants to sell to both "quantities of 100" embedded markets, and "quantities of 100,000" $199 laptops/tablets, but they're really only viable use of production capacity as long as the quantities-of-100,000 orders last.
I'm not sure the ARM ecosystem is better, because of the tendency to highly-integrated SoCs. Even if some manufacturer says "here's a vault with 50 years worth of chips", it's unlikely they'll have the one particular part you want in that vault..
I wonder if, of all things, it would end up being something like the RP2040/RPi Pico. Third party designs are going to leave a lot of inertia to keep it available as-is, and at the same time, there's not really a single market-dominating customer who makes the product uneconomical if he leaves.
Yes, AMD made. Nobody wants another Atom C2000 "System May Experience Inability to Boot or May Cease Operation," blown bus clock outputs situation with hundreds of $ millions in recalls.
What the world really needs right now is a power efficient, server version of the NUC.
An SoC board that carries a solid GbE NIC with LoM (or perhaps SFP+), a console port, supports ECC SDRAM, no sound hardware, and either no video, or very limited-scope 2D-only GPU. Maybe a couple USB 3.1 ports.
>> Intel has to become a bigger maker of chips to stay among the few companies that can develop and use leading-edge fabrication technologies....
They are not currently in that category. Nowhere in the article was any mention of EUV lithography, which is really where Intel fell behind. When they get it figured out I'm sure they'll make some rapid progress, but until then they simply aren't on the leading edge. Aside from capacity I'd say they're about equivalent to Global Foundries, except GloFo has some specialty processes too.
AMD has been doing custom x86 SoCs for a long time, mostly for game consoles. It hasn't had any real impact on the laptop/desktop/server market so far.
That was to be expected, PCs as phenomen only happened due to IBMs mistake of keeping them vertically integrated as all the remaining 16 bit platforms.
Modern laptops and mobile devices reflect a return to the vertical integratio of those computing devices (Atari, Amiga, Macintosh), with PC towers becoming a niche market and businesses coming back to timesharing.
> in the coming years Intel will cease to buy back shares, but will invest in new manufacturing capacities instead.
This is critical for Intel's turnaround. Good to have a CEO that wants to put money into process engineering and capacity than financial engineering to pump up the stock price to meet his personal compensation goals.
And I'm still sad I can't buy a cheap 1L PC based on Ryzen 1606G, with two built-in 10GbE network cards...
Whatever happened with that excellent small-factor platform, anybody knows?
Sure there are several online stores out there that offer some such PCs but they're all pretty expensive and definitely don't reflect the real price (IMO anyway).
I wonder if I'll be able to buy something like that for a home server or whether AMD will release next-gen small-factor PC platform.
I don't recall if any of them meet your specifications, but ServeTheHome has been reviewing a bunch of 1L PCs. Lenovo has a bunch that feature Ryzen CPUs. https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/
Please, add a common hardware interface, not the ARM clusterfuck. With BIOS and such.
U-Boot is a nightmare to handle in my wm8850 netbook, and it requieres custom kernels to boot and work.
It's either that, or a crappy and obscure community Android release from the community.
If intel doesn't consider ARM for its client devices (like Laptops) then their market is going to further erode by QC/Nuvia as selling a 300-500$ CPU is going to be a great market for QC to enter. Intel has already lost a considerable share to AMD and they might lose that further to QC because I just don't see an intel laptop offering ridiculous battery life and TDP like the M1 which QC can achieve in a couple of years hopefully. At this point I feel like intel is just being adamant which is not good for both business and customers because in the linux and Open-source space people would much rather prefer an Intel/AMD platform than QC.
Which embedded systems customer cares about the cpu architecture?
You need x86 when you need Windows Software. Or still for some macOS software.
But if you develop a set driving car for example, you just compile your code for the architecture of your SoC. And if you switch architecture you invest a few weeks to port it.
I think what they actually want is: if it is x86, it needs to be a core. Currently most people are quite happy with 20 years of already having ARM as a core (SoC, FPGA, etc.)!
RISC-V sooner than later, the uncertainty around ARM the company due to the buyout and the whole thing with ARM China is just yuck. But honestly nothing the M1 does x86/RISC-V can't do. At this point ISA is just an ABI it's more about keeping execution pipes filled, as long as a frontend can do that it can absolutely clean up on the metrics.
Another thing although speculative: Windows 11's move to require UEFI/x64/SecureBoot could be prep for AMD and Intel to completely drop a ton of legacy support (16bit etc.) in the chips. I'd give it about 20% chance of happening, but I definitely wouldn't rule it out given you can emulate a 386 easier than you virtualize one.
[+] [-] jonplackett|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vardump|4 years ago|reply
Nowadays embedded development is revolving around ARM pretty heavily. Maybe RISC-V in the future, but for now, it's ARM, definitely not x86.
Had Intel done that 20-25 years ago the story might be completely different.
[+] [-] marcos100|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basilgohar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mzarate06|4 years ago|reply
To add some history - AMD's semi-custom segment dates back prior to Su's CEO seat. It was initiated in 2012-2013 under CEO Rory Read [1], although Su was heavily involved in it back then too (as SVP, and eventually as COO, before taking over as CEO in 2014). It ended up primarily targeting game consoles, though it claimed residual wins in other markets too.
It turned out to be an excellent move at the time, as it proved to be a bit of a lifeline during AMD's rough years. And modern-day AMD continues executing on it well.
I also agree w/your general point - given AMD's history doing this kind of thing, it's tough to see what Intel could do in this segment that AMD couldn't do better.
[1] https://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/7281?cPage=4&all=False&...
[+] [-] aero-glide2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klelatti|4 years ago|reply
Put another way two thirds are not interested in x86.
Sorry to say that this article reads like an Intel press release.
[+] [-] Macha|4 years ago|reply
> One of the key elements of Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy is the company's newly created Intel Foundry Services (IFS) group that will manufacture chips for others. This group can operate as a classic foundry making any chips its clients want: Arm-based system-on-chips, RISC-V-based controllers, tensor processing units (TPUs), or graphics processing units (GPUs), just to name a few options.
> But Intel can naturally add a unique sauce to its IFS offering: highly competitive general-purpose x86 cores as well as an extremely broad portfolio of its silicon-proven IPs. Earlier this year Intel said that it was in discussion with over 100 of potential IFS customers and recently it revealed that about 1/3 of them were interested in custom x86-based SoCs.
> "Of the 100+ customers, I'd say about a third of them are interested in that x86ish of our ecosystem," said Gelsinger.
1/3 of _potential Intel foundry clients_ want x86. Of course there are plenty of companies investigating the new foundry option coming onboard with Samsung/TSMC lead times being what they are that have no interest in porting their products to x86.
[+] [-] relativ575|4 years ago|reply
We aren't talking about Intel's customers in general, but those who are using or planning to use Intel's new fab services. In other words, 1/3 of those interested in creating their own chip are also interested in custom x86 design.
> Sorry to say that this article reads like an Intel press release.
This isn't an article but an interview with Intel's CEO. As Intel officially as it gets
[+] [-] smolder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluGill|4 years ago|reply
Lower power consumption would be nice too. We don't always have mains power.
[+] [-] hakfoo|4 years ago|reply
I can go to Mouser right now and buy a pin-compatible 80186 right now in quantity of 1. You can even order a new 8088 from Renesas, but it says they're back-ordered til next February.
I've seen 386s and 486s manufactured recently enough to have the "newer" Intel logo (the one without the dropped "e") which implies well into the 21st century.
With modern product lines, I'm not so sure. The Atom-class products that seem most appealing for embedded use tend to have a very short shelf life (in those terms). I wonder if they're saddled by a dual market obligation-- I suspect Intel wants to sell to both "quantities of 100" embedded markets, and "quantities of 100,000" $199 laptops/tablets, but they're really only viable use of production capacity as long as the quantities-of-100,000 orders last.
I'm not sure the ARM ecosystem is better, because of the tendency to highly-integrated SoCs. Even if some manufacturer says "here's a vault with 50 years worth of chips", it's unlikely they'll have the one particular part you want in that vault..
I wonder if, of all things, it would end up being something like the RP2040/RPi Pico. Third party designs are going to leave a lot of inertia to keep it available as-is, and at the same time, there's not really a single market-dominating customer who makes the product uneconomical if he leaves.
[+] [-] kwanbix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidewndr46|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caeril|4 years ago|reply
An SoC board that carries a solid GbE NIC with LoM (or perhaps SFP+), a console port, supports ECC SDRAM, no sound hardware, and either no video, or very limited-scope 2D-only GPU. Maybe a couple USB 3.1 ports.
I would buy these in lots of 100, if available.
[+] [-] phkahler|4 years ago|reply
They are not currently in that category. Nowhere in the article was any mention of EUV lithography, which is really where Intel fell behind. When they get it figured out I'm sure they'll make some rapid progress, but until then they simply aren't on the leading edge. Aside from capacity I'd say they're about equivalent to Global Foundries, except GloFo has some specialty processes too.
[+] [-] turminal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opencl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|4 years ago|reply
Modern laptops and mobile devices reflect a return to the vertical integratio of those computing devices (Atari, Amiga, Macintosh), with PC towers becoming a niche market and businesses coming back to timesharing.
So yeah, it will happen.
[+] [-] tsjq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MurMan|4 years ago|reply
This is critical for Intel's turnaround. Good to have a CEO that wants to put money into process engineering and capacity than financial engineering to pump up the stock price to meet his personal compensation goals.
[+] [-] DiabloD3|4 years ago|reply
AMD didn't build Rome in a day.
[+] [-] anonuser123456|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmeisthax|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdimitar|4 years ago|reply
Whatever happened with that excellent small-factor platform, anybody knows?
Sure there are several online stores out there that offer some such PCs but they're all pretty expensive and definitely don't reflect the real price (IMO anyway).
I wonder if I'll be able to buy something like that for a home server or whether AMD will release next-gen small-factor PC platform.
[+] [-] zorgmonkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tumblewit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andix|4 years ago|reply
You need x86 when you need Windows Software. Or still for some macOS software.
But if you develop a set driving car for example, you just compile your code for the architecture of your SoC. And if you switch architecture you invest a few weeks to port it.
[+] [-] Mindwipe|4 years ago|reply
ATMs seem an obvious choice - lots are running on Windows underneath, but might well want custom security elements in the silicon.
[+] [-] xyzzy21|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MangoCoffee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rubyist5eva|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shadonototro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leeter|4 years ago|reply
Another thing although speculative: Windows 11's move to require UEFI/x64/SecureBoot could be prep for AMD and Intel to completely drop a ton of legacy support (16bit etc.) in the chips. I'd give it about 20% chance of happening, but I definitely wouldn't rule it out given you can emulate a 386 easier than you virtualize one.
[+] [-] silon42|4 years ago|reply