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The RV770 Story: Documenting ATI's Road to Successby Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/2/2008 12:00 AM EST
- Posted in
- GPUs
116 Comments
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Sahrin - Monday, January 25, 2010 - linkAnand,
I love this piece. Not sure if you'll get notified, but while doing some research on the performance of Hybrid Crossfire, I came back - it was interesting to see the tone of the piece, and hear about the guys at ATI talking vageuly about what would become the 5870. Fascinating stuff, I've got to put a bookmark in my calendar to remind me to come back to this next year when RV970 is released (pending no further difficulties).
Any chance of a follow-up piece with the guys in SC? Reply
caldran - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - linkthe gpu industry is squeezing more and more transistors(SP s or what ever) .it would be energy efficient if it could disable some cores when there is less load than reducing clock frequency and 2D mode.just like in the latest AMD processor.a HD 4350 would consume power less than HD 4850 in IDLE right. Reply
bupkus - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - linkI couldn't put it down until I had finished.
Extremely enjoyable write! Reply
yacoub - Tuesday, December 09, 2008 - link"that R580 would be similar in vain"
You want vein. Not vain, not vane. Vein. =) Reply
CEO Ballmer - Sunday, December 07, 2008 - linkYou people don't mention their alliance with MS!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com">http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com Reply
BoFox - Sunday, December 07, 2008 - linkLOL!!!!! Reply
BoFox - Sunday, December 07, 2008 - linkGreat article--a nice read!
From how I remember history:
In 2006, when the legendary X1900XTX took the world by surprise, actually beating the scarce and coveted 7800GTX-512, I bought it. It was king of the hill from January 2006 until the 7950GX2 stole the crown back for the fastest "single-slot" solution about 6 months later around June 2006, only a few months after the smaller 90nm 7900GTX was *finally* released in April 2006. Everybody started hailing Nvidia again although it was really an SLI dual-gpu solution sandwiched into one PCI-E slot. Perhaps it was the quad-gpu thingy that sounded so cool. It was obviously over-hyped but really took the attention away from ATI.
GDDR4 on the X1950XTX hardly did any good, since it was a bit late (Sept 2006) with only like 3-4 performance increase over the X1900. Well then the 8800GTX came in Nov 2006 and had a similar impact that the 9700Pro had.
As everybody wanted to see how the R600 would do, it was delayed, and disappointed hugely in June 2007. The 8800GTX/Ultra kept on selling for around $600 for nearly 12 months straight, making history. 80nm just did not cut it for the R600, so ATI wanted to have its dual-GPU single card REVENGE against Nvidia. And it would be even better this time since it's done on a single PCB, not a sandwiched solution like Nvidia's 7900GX2. Hence the tiny RV770 chips made on unexpected 55nm process! The 3870X2 did beat the 8800GTX in most reviews, but had to use Crossfire just like with SLI. Also, the 3870X2 only used GDDR3, unlike the single 3870 with fast GDDR4.
But Nvidia still took the attention away from the 3870 series by tossing an 8800GT up for grabs. When the 3870X2 came out in Jan 2008, Nvidia touted its upcoming 9800GX2 (to be released one month afterwards). So, Nvidia stopped ATI with an ace up its sleeve.
Round 2 for ATI's revenge: The 4870X2. And it worked this time! There was no way that Nvidia could expect the 4870 to be *that much* better than the 3870. Everybody was saying the 4870 would be 50% faster, and Nvidia yawned at that, thinking that the 4870 still couldnt touch the 9800GTX or 9800GX2 when crossfired. Plus Nvidia expected the 4870 to still have the "AA bug" since the 3870 did not fix it from the 2900XT, and the 4870 had a similar architecture. Boy, Nvidia was all wrong there! The 4870 actually ended up being *50%* faster than the 9800GTX in some games.
So, now ATI has earned its vengeance with its single-slot dual-GPU solution that Nvidia had with its 7900GX2 and 9800GX2 a while ago. With the 4870X2 destroying the GTX 280, ATI does indeed have its crown or "halo".
Unfortunately, Quad-crossfire hardly does well against the GTX 280 in SLI. We now know that quad-GPU solutions give a far lower "bang-per-GPU" due to poor driver optimizations, etc.. So most enthusiast gamers with the money and a 2560x1600 monitor are running two GTX 280's right now instead of two 4870X2's.. oh well!
One thing not mentioned about GDDR5 is that it eats power like mad! The memory alone consumes 40W, even at idle, and that is one of the reasons why the 4870 does not idle so well. If ATI reduces the speed low enough, it messes up the Aero graphics in Vista. It would have been nice if ATI released an intermediate 4860 version with GDDR4 memory at 2800+MHz effective.
Now, I cannot even start to expect what the RV870 will be like. I think Nvidia is going to really want its own revenge this time around, being so financially hurt with the whole 9800 - GTX 200 range plus being unable to release a 55nm version of G200 to this day. Nvidia just cannot beat the 4870X2 with a dual G200 on 55nm, and this is the reason for the re-spins (delays) with an attempt to reduce the power consumption while maintaining the necessary clock speed. Pardon me for pointing out the obvious...
Hope my mini-article was a nice supplement to the main article! :) Reply
CarrellK - Sunday, December 07, 2008 - linkNot bad at all.
BTW, 55nm has less to do with how good the RV770 is than the re-architecture & re-design our engineers did post-RV670.
To illustrate, scale the RV770 from 55nm to 65nm (only core scales, not pads & analog) and see how big it is. Now compare that to anything else in 65nm.
Pretty darned good engineers I'd say.
BoFox - Sunday, December 07, 2008 - linkTrue, and nowhere in the article was it pointed out that since the AA algorithm relied on the shaders, simply upping the shader units from 320 to a whopping 800 completely solved the weak AA performance that plagued 2900's and 3870's. It did not cost too much chip die size or power consumption either. ATI certainly did design the R600 with the future in mind (by moving AA to the shader units, with future expansion). Now the 4870 does amazing well with 8x FSAA, even beating the GTX 280 in some games.
I wanted to edit my above post by saying that the dual G200 needed to have low enough power consumption so that it could still be cooled effectively in a single-slot sandwich cooling solution. The 4870X2 has a dual-slot cooler, but Nvidia just cannot engineer the G200 on a single PCB with the architecture that they are currently using (monster chip die size, and 16 memory chips that scales with 448-bit to 512-bit bandwidth instead of using 8 memory chips with 512-bit bandwidth). That is why Nvidia must make the move to GDDR5 memory, or else re-design the memory architecture to a greater degree. Just my thoughts... I still have no idea what we'll be seeing in 2009!
papapapapapapapababy - Saturday, December 06, 2008 - linkmore like uber mega retards, right? if they are so smart... why do they keep making such terrible, horrible, shitty drivers?
i really really, really want to buy a 4850, i really do. but im not going to do it. im going to go and buy the 9800gt. And i know is just a re branded 8800gt. And i know nvidia is making shitty @ explosive hardware ( my 8600gt just died) And i know that gpu is slower, older, oced 65nm tech. And that nvidia is pushing gimmicky tricks " physics" and buying devs. but guess what? NVIDIA = good, clean drivers. New game? New drivers there. Fast. UN-Bloated drivers, that work, is is that hard ati? Really. or maybe you guys just suck?
Im going to pick all tech@ because of that. Thats how much i fkn hate your bloated and retarded drivers ATI. Install ms, framework for a broken control panel? stupid. And whats up with all those unnecessary services eating my memory and cpu cycles? ATI Hotkey poller?, ATI Smart?, ATI2EVXX.exe, ATI2EVXX.exe,NET 2.0 ? always there and the damm thing takes forever to load? Nvidia dsnt use any bloated crap, so why do you feel entitled to polute my pc with your bloated drivers?
AGAIN HORRIBLE DRIVERS ATI! I DONT WANT A SINGLE EXTRA SERVICE! i just build a pc for a friend. I choose the hd4670, beautiful card, really cool, fast, efficient. I love it. I want one for myself. But the drivers? ARg, i ended up using just the display driver and still the memory consumption was utterly retarded compared to my nvidia card.
so geniuses? move your asses and fix your drivers.
thanks, and good job with your hard.
Chainlink - Saturday, December 06, 2008 - linkI've followed Anandtech for many years but never felt the need to respond to posts or reviews. I've always used anandtech as THE source of information for tech reviews and I just wanted to show my appreciation for this article.
Following the graphics industry is certainly a challenge, I think I've owned most of the major cards mentioned in this insitful article. But to learn some of the background of why AMD/ATI made some of the decisions they did is just AWESOME.
I've always been AMD for CPU (won a XP1800+ at the Philly zoo!!!) and a mix of the red and green for GPUs. But I'm glad to see AMD back on track in both CPU and GPU especially (I actually have stock in them :/).
Thanks Anand for the best article I've read anywhere, it actually made me sign up to post this! Reply
pyrosity - Saturday, December 06, 2008 - linkAnand & Co., AMD & Co.,
Thank you. I'm not too much into following hardware these days but this article was interesting, informative, and insightful. You all have my appreciation for what amounts to a unique, humanizing story that feels like a diamond in the rough (not to say AT is "the rough," but perhaps the sea of reviews, charts, benchmarking--things that are so temporal). Reply
Flyboy27 - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkAmazing that you got to sit down with these folks. Great article. This is why I visit anandtech.com! Reply
BenSkywalker - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkIs the ~$550 price point seen on ATi's current high end part evidence of them making their GPUs for the masses? If this entrire strategy is as exceptional as this article makes it out to be, and this was an effort to honestly give high end performance to the masses then why no lengthy conversation of how ATi currently offers, by a hefty margin, the most expensive graphics cards on the market? You even present the slide that demonstrates the key to obtaining the high end was scalability, yet you fail to discuss how their pricing structure is the same one nVidia was using, they simply chose to use two smaller GPUs in the place of one monolithic part. Not saying there is anything wrong with their approach at all- but your implication that it was a choice made around a populist mindset is quite out of place, and by a wide margin. They have the fastest part out, and they are charging a hefty premium for it. Wrong in any way? Absolutely not. An overall approach that has the same impact that nV or 3dfx before them had on consumers? Absolutely. Nothing remotely populist about it.
From an engineering angle, it is very interesting how you gloss over the impact that 55nm had for ATi versus nVidia and in turn how this current direction will hold up when they are not dealing with a build process advantage. It also was interesting that quite a bit of time was given to the advantages that ATi's approach had over nV's in terms of costs, yet ATi's margins remain well behind that of nVidia's(not included in the article). All of these factors could have easily been left out of the article altogether and you could have left it as an article about the development of the RV770 from a human interest perspective.
This article could have been a lot better as a straight human interest fluff piece, by half bringing in some elements that are favorable to the direction of the article while leaving out any analysis from an engineering or business perspective from an objective standpoint this reads a lot more like a press release then journalism. Reply
Garson007 - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkNever in the article did it say anything about ATI turning socialistic. All it did mention was that they designed a performance card instead of an enthusiast one. How they approach to finally get to the enthusiast block, and how much it is priced, is completely irrelevant to the fact that they designed a performance card. This also allowed ATI to bring better graphics to lower priced segments because the relative scaling was much less than nVidia -still- has to undertake.
The built process was mentioned. It is completely nVidia's prerogative to ignore a certain process until they create the architecture that works on one they already know; you are bringing up a coulda/woulda/shoulda situation around nVidia's strategy - when it means nothing to the current end-user. The future after all, is the future.
I'd respectfully disagree about the journalism statement, as I believe this to be a much higher form of journalism than a lot of what happens on the internet these days.
I'd also disagree with the people who say that AMD is any less secretive or anything. Looking in the article there is no real information in it which could disadvantage them in any way; all this article revealed about AMD is a more human side to the inner workings.
Thank you AMD for making this article possible, hopefully others will follow suit. Reply
travbrad - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkThis was a really cool and interesting article, thanks for writing it. :)
However there was one glaring flaw I noticed: "The Radeon 8500 wasn't good at all; there was just no beating NVIDIA's GeForce4, the Ti 4200 did well in the mainstream market and the Ti 4600 was king of the high end. "
That is a very misleading and flat-out false statement. The Radeon 8500 was launched in October 2001, and the Geforce 4 was launched in April 2002 (that's a 7 month difference). I would certainly hope a card launched more than half a year later was faster.
The Radeon 8500 was up against the Geforce3 when it was launched. It was generally as fast/faster than the similarly priced Ti200, and only a bit slower than the more expensive Ti500. Hardly what I would call "not good at all". Admittedly it wasn't nearly as popular as the Geforce3, but popularity != performance. Reply
7Enigma - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkThat's all I have to say. As near to perfection as you can get in an article. Reply
hanstollo - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkHello, I've been visiting your site for about a year now and just wanted to let you know I'm really impressed with all of the work you guys do. Thank you so much for this article as i feel i really learned a whole lot from it. It was well written and kept me engaged. I had never heard of concepts like harvesting and repairability. I had no idea that three years went into designing this GPU. I love keeping up with hardware and really trust and admire your site. Thank you for taking the time to write this article. Reply
dvinnen - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkBeen reading this site for going on 8 years now and this article ranks up there with your best ever. As I've grown older and games have taken a back seat I find articles like this much more interesting. When a new product comes out I find myself reading the forwards and architectural bits of the articles and skipping over all the graphs to the conclusions.
Anyways, just wish I was one of those brilliant programmers who was skilled enough to do massively parallelized programming. Reply
quanta - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkWhile the RV770 engineers may not have GDDR5 SDRAM to play with during its development, ATI can already use the GDDR4 SDRAM, which already has the memory bandwidth doubling that of GDDR5 SDRAM, AND it was already used in Radeon X1900 (R580+) cores. If there was any bandwidth superiority over NVIDIA, it was because of NVIDIA's refusal to switch to GDDR4, not lack of technology. Reply
yourwhiteshadow - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkabsolutely brilliant. i've always read anandtech instead of tomshardware because of objective reviews. i was reading an intel review, and people were questioning the objectivity of anandtech. while some might could look at this as praising ATI/AMD, i would definitely say this was a very objective view of what happened. seriously, one of the BEST articles i've read since the 4850/4870 review. Reply
kevyeoh - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkI've been reading anandtech for years and there wasn't any article that makes me wanna read every single word of it. Usually i will read the forewords and then skip on to the Conclusion. But for this article, i really read every single words! period! Anandtech rocks! Reply
nitemareglitch - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkI was actually getting a little bored with the articles around here, until I read this one. Great job, I loved reading this story!! Reply
lchyi - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkThis is by far the best (and most insightful) article I have read here to date Anand. It sounds like you put in a ton of thought to it and I have never flown through 7,500 words as quick as that read. Congrats to the ATI guys for their successful gamble on the RV770. The last three years must have been an extremely interesting experience for them and their engineers. Reply
joshjnm - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkGreat article I will bandwagon with the rest of you and agree this is one of the best articles I've read in a while.
josh6079 - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkI thoroughly enjoyed the article. Last time I was really involved with graphics cards was when the X1900's were in full swing and G80 was on everyone's mind. The history told in the article helped bring me up to pace as to what has transpired since I stopped gaming as much. I can remember how the Video card section used to be here on the forums with the trolls and constant flames. Two camps of people cheered on for one or the other competitors instead of realizing that they should be cheering for competition itself.
Great job ATI, Nvidia - what's next? Reply
Seikent - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkVery good article, most of these interesting background stories are written in books, but a lot of years latter.
Something, that is not mentioned, is that it seems that AMD didn't affect ATI in any way (technically speaking). Many thought that the R600 failure had something to do with AMD. Reply
BSMonitor - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkAwesome article.
I am definately a performance/mainstream kinda guy in this market. Definately love the competition. I started my first build with a Geforce 4200Ti, moved up to the infamous 9700Pro, followed by X1900, and now 4850HD...
It is good to see that the ATI/AMD didn't damage ATI as a whole. Rock on guys! Love those cheap kick ass Crossfire cards! Go 4850HD x2. Reply
dmer - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkas a long time reader of anand I never felt the need to register an account; however, after reading your article I felt compelled to create an account just to commend you on an excellent article.
we need more articles that give us insight into business decisions like this. job well done mate! Reply
johnkwright - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkAnand,
I've been a long time reader of AnandTech but I especially liked this article. It was interesting to get a peek behind the curtain to see what challenges companies face when making these tough decisions. Hopefully more companies take a chance and share more of their stories with this site. Keep up the good work.
John Wright Reply
nezuko - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkI think those phrase is describe what Graphic-field is. Another year win, and another year lose. But from those situations, only hardworking and tough guy would be able to turn all upside down. And ATi team do make it. Now I relieved I make a decision to buy 4670, though not performance, it still does big bang for the buck. And with those Catalyst 8.12, I would be more grateful that I bought this video card. Has been downloaded it and now testing it.
Would Anand make another article about those GP-GPU programming language to make a data parralel computing possible.
Well, I considering to build my Leo Platform in the H2 of 2009 when the AM3 Deneb is out, Sata 3, and RD890. Reply
JimiP - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkLike many before me have said, this has to be one of the best articles I've ever read here at AT. It really puts things into perspective. We (the consumer) are always criticizing or praising everything that comes out and don't take into account the amount of hard work and time put into the release. I'm 4850 owner, and I couldn't be happier with the performance I've received. I would like to personally thank ATI/AMD and the entire team that put RV770 into play. Absolutely brilliant.
I would also like to thank Anand for sharing this awesome experience with us. Reply
zshift - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkI have to say this was a great article. Great idea to write about the story behind these guys and the rv770. musta been a helluva relief when they realized how great the gpus were in the market, especially after taking such huge risks. For these guys to pull through the way they did, with the whole gddr5 issue and the die-shrink/physical limitations is amazing. I thought I was stressed in college. I can't imagine what its like to design something like this for 3 years not being even sure it'll work in the end. That's one hell of a resolve, makes me like ATI a bit more than I already do.
Keep writing great articles here, this is my favorite site to read reviews on, and this is another reason why.
go anand! :p Reply
strikeback03 - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkI agree with everyone else that the article is very well written. I am not sure if these would even be the right guys to ask, but did you bring up any of the driver issues your other recent articles have mentioned with them? As you have mentioned before, it is probably not the best business plan to assume nVidia will screw up again, and they should probably get their crossfire support in order for the good feelings about this strategy to continue. Reply
Dyno1979 - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkDefinitely one of the best articles I've read lately. And I didn't even notice that typo, probably because I was reading the article instead of looking at it.
5 stars Reply
CarrellK - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkThe "sweet spot" strategy would have amounted to *nothing* without the efforts of many very talented engineers (and a little luck as Anand has noted). They made the 770 happen and deserve the lion's share of the credit.
I didn't think Anand would use this for anything other than background here-and-there in future articles. I fully expected him to politely cut me off at some point and say "about those future architectures..." which would have lead to Eric, Mike, and Mark telling a different interesting story. Thanks to Anand et al for telling this part of the 770 story. Responding to a comment or two in the posts:
* Sorry to quench the speculation - the AMD purchase had no effect on the 770's execution. Dirk Meyer and the other AMD executives supported Rick, a guy that they really didn't know, during some pretty tough times at AMD. They did their jobs so that we could do ours.
* The price range for 770-based cards was determined back in 2005 - it was an essential factor limiting the GPU cost, one of the big gambles. We had no clue what nV's 2008 pricing would be, but we did know what the gamers wanted. At launch we were tempted oh so briefly to launch at a higher price given the competitor's product offerings. It took some will-power for the starving man (us) to pass up a banquet (profits). We had a sneaking suspicion there was a lot of unhappiness about the direction prices had gone, and didn't want to be a party to that for the sake of a few weeks better revenue. Greed never pays. Remembering your customers does.
P.S. We don't keep any dart-board pictures of Anand around the office. However I *do* recall seeing his picture somewhere and thinking at the time that it *would* make a good dart target. Just a thought... :-)
lyeoh - Sunday, December 07, 2008 - linkYou guys got the sweet spot right as far as I'm concerned (I'm not sure if it's true for others - does it show up in the units sold?)
Before the ATI 3800 (RV670), and Nvidia 8800GT, it seemed like after shelling out a few hundred US dollars, you'd only get low/medium quality at current games. And cheaper cards were pathetic to unusable for new games.
So I stuck to playing old games with on my old video card (Ti4200) - which was decent in its time.
After the beginning of the new "sweet spot" era, this year I bought a 9800GT (and a new PC). While the 9800GT is not as good as AMD/ATI's offerings in hardware performance terms, I was concerned about ATI's drivers/software. A colleague tried an ATI card on his office PC, but in the end he had to switch to Nvidia to get his multiscreen set up on Linux working the way he wanted, and I had seen a fair number of complaints from others. So far Nvidia's drivers have been OK for me whether in Windows or Linux.
On the other hand I've seen too many Nvidia cards failing in hardware terms (bad caps, bad whatever). So pick your poison ;).
But if the cards aren't totally crap, it often takes less time to just replace a faulty card, than to keep tinkering with drivers and software configs (sometimes to no avail).
Anyway, many thanks for helping to make stuff affordable, even though I picked Nvidia again ;).
In the end I'm still back to mostly playing old games though... Reply
MrSpadge - Saturday, December 06, 2008 - linkThanks Andantech, ATI & AMD for this amazing article!
And I'd like to add a point which has not been raised yet, at least in this discussion: the "small and fast enough" strategy only works because GPUs hit the realm where they're power limited!
The point is, whenever you go multi-GPU you loose performance due to inefficiencies and communication delays and there are also some transistors lost to redundant logic. If you had the choice between one 100 Mio transistor chip or 2 50 Mio ones, then the 100 Mio one would certainly be faster; assuming both could run at the same clock speed, which previously was determined by chip design (basically identical in the example) and process (identical).
But GT200 is too big, it can not fully fledge its clock speed wings because its power limited. Imagine GT200 at 1.5 - 1.8 GHz shader clock - it would be much more in line with performance expectations. RV770 on the other hand can be pushed quite a bit and on the 4870 it chews up lots of power for such a small chip - but that's OK because this power envelope has been accepted and the performance is there to justify it. And the 2 GPU versions are succesful because the power envelope on such "freak"-cards is larger.
And another frequently overlooked aspect: not all of GT200s transistors contribute to game performance. The 30 shaders which are 64 bit capable must be large and don't help games at all (and probably won't for quite some time). This is a very forward looking feature for games and a feature of immediate benefit for GP-GPU.
MrS Reply
Frallan - Friday, December 05, 2008 - linkThank you m8!
Not only for delivering good products but also for delivering good information and entertainment.
Please convey to the other "Fellows" the heartfelt thanks of this community.
JimmiG - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkCongratulations to Anandtech for one of the most interesting articles this year. Congratulations to ATI/AMD for putting out their best and most exciting product since R300/9700 Pro.
The industry really needed something like RV770. When the 9700 Pro came out in 2002, it was at the cutting edge of technology and performance, far ahead of the previous champion, the Ti4600, yet it launched at only $399. Nvidia launched the 8800 Ultra and GTX280 at $800 and $600 respectively, even though neither GPU introduced any significant new features, only moderately higher framerates.
I currently have a 4850 512MB which I bought in July and I love it... It runs all my favorite games at great framerates and with fantastic image quality at 1680x1050. Still, I wouldn't considering myself an "ATI fan". When it's time for me to upgrade again, I will buy the best card in the $200 range and won't care whether the sticker on the GPU fan is green or red. Reply
DerekWilson - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkI'm glad you guys were able to stick to the plan an launch at the amazing prices you hit. It really shook up the industry and helped bring higher performance to lower price points. Now we just need the same thing to happen with integrated graphics.
But seriously ... about those future architectures ... maybe you guys want to sit down and have another nice long chat? ;-) Reply
tygrus - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkChoice A : Spend another 1B on a larger chip R&D, fab problems, low yields, high unit cost, potential delays, large dual-slot with space&cooling problems. Loose mid-range revenue potential, more R&D/time etc. to make half-size chip for mid-range.
Choice B : Make the design to be price/power/performance efficient for very profitable mass-market. If you users want almost double the performance, buy 2 identical cards which saves on not producing a low volume BIG chip/card. (Though now we have 2 chips for X2 which still simplifies and reasonable efficient compared to a card design cramming a single BIG chip starved of bandwidth). Reply
CloudFire - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkhands down one of the best, if not the best article i've ever read at anand. GREAT JOB! it shows how believing and getting back up when you're being beat down can get you where you want to be!
for those people who took up the challenge to be different and change, imo are the true innovators who changes the world in the face of extreme adversity. Reply
Emperor88 - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkGreat artilce. There are precious few of these.
Thanks a lot :) Reply
cowofdoom - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkLong time reader, first time poster. Great article. I really think it says it all. Any time you get a chance to write articles like this I would love to see them. Great job. Reply
Emperor88 - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkhaha first time (wait second now) poster here as well. Best article I've read here. Reply
Barack Obama - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkKeep it comin'! Reply
Boundless - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkVery nice article once again...helps reinforce my decision of keeping this place readily bookmarked since I first visited back in 2001. Reply
Regs - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI want to know what AMD was thinking for those quite 3 years when they blew Prescott out of the water. Did they see Conroe coming? I think it's time for Anand to get on some black paint and go commando over there at AMD HQ. Reply
Cloudie - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkOne of the best articles I've ever read. Kudos to Anand, and thanks to AMD (: Reply
n7 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThese kind of articles are why i love AT.
Fantastic read, thanx! Reply
glynor - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThanks Anand. It is things just like this that have kept me coming back for years and year. Great work! Reply
jah128 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkReally good article, one of the best I've read here. Reply
doittoit - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkDon't forget what rv770 did to GTX 280. Made it completely irrelevent. 2 x 4850 made it so no-one would ever bother with nvidia's "monster". Now they just have to get over the hump on driver support. Down with NVIDIA!! Reply
Element81 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkBest article I've read on your site in a long time. I crave all the performance benchmarks and reviews of new products but the back story behind the creation of the RV770 is amazing. I will be building myself a new rig very soon and I've been following hardware religiously in the last few months to help me make my decision. A new 4850 or 4870 will def end up in my new build. Reply
BernardP - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThanks for this great article. Well-written and full of new information. Reply
truk007 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThis article is the best I've read on any tech site. Loved it! I hope Anandtech has more behind-the-scenes stories like this again, and I also hope that companies continue to give these types of interviews. It was a great journalistic piece that made the company all that much more human. Thanks! Reply
rwei - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI've been reading for 2-3 years and was too lazy to comment...but I found this article compelling enough to create an account just to say how much I liked it =)
For a student studying both compsci and business/mgmt, the dual focus on engineering and business challenges was very interesting. Though there was a very obvious potential for a "rah-rah ATI!" bias given the nature of the interview, especially when discussing R600. Reply
WeaselITB - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThere must be echos in here, because I'm adding my words to the mix. In the roughly-10 years that I've been reading AnandTech (yes, I remember reading the Celeron "launch" article and the whole celery jokes that went with it), I must say that this is one of the best articles I've read here.
It's articles like this that keep me coming back to AT all these years. Everyone and their dog can benchmark and put up pretty graphs (no offense, Derek), but it's the meaty articles like this one that give AT that leg-up over the competition.
Thanks, Anand, for an awesome ten years, and here's to ten more! Reply
Goty - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkOn page 2, when discussing the Radeon 8500, you have to remember that the 8500's intended competition was the GeForce 3 series, against which it was fairly competitive (especially at the end of its life). ATI never really released a product to compete with the GeForce 4 cards. Reply
MrSpadge - Saturday, December 06, 2008 - linkExactly what I was thinking! That's why I got a 8500LE back then, when Geforce 4 was not in (public) sight yet. Reply
FireSnake - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - link... which one is Anand (on the picture at the beginning of the article)?
I always wondered how he looks like ... I guess the one on the right. Reply
3DoubleD - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI've had Anandtech as my home page for 5 years and I've read almost every article since (and even some of the older ones). This is by far one of your greatest works!
Thanks Reply
hellstrider - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkKudos to Anand for such a great article, extremely insightful. I may even go out and purchase AMD stock now :)
I love AMD even when it's on the bottom, I own 780G + X2 + hd4850, in hopes that Deneb (or AM3 processors for that matter) will come in time to repeat the success of rv770 launch, at which point I will upgrade my obsolete X2 and have a sweet midrange machine.
My only concern is that Nvidia is looking at all this smirking and planning an onslaught with the 55nm refresh. There is a very "disturbing" article at Xbitlabs that Nvidia is stock-piling the 55nm GT200 parts; seems like that's something they would do – start selling those soon and undercut 4800 series badly.
I'm just a concerned hd4850 owner and I don't want to see my card obsolete within couple of months. I don't really see AMD's answer to 55nm GT200 in such short period of time?!?!
Any thoughts?
Goty - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI don't think you'll have to worry too badly about the 55nm G200s. NVIDIA won't drop prices much, if at all; they're already smarting from the price drops enacted after the RV770 launch. There's also the fact that the 4850 isn't in the same market space as any of the G200 cards, so they're not really competitive anyhow. Reply
ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI always imagined designing GPUs would be very stressful given you're trying to guess things years in advance, but this inside look at how things are done was very informative.
On GDDR5, it's interesting to read that ATI was pushing so hard for this technology and they felt it was their only hope for the RV770. What about GDDR4? I thought ATI was a big supporter of it too and was the first to implement it. I'm pretty sure Samsung announced GDDR4 that could run at 3.2GBit/s in 2006 which isn't far from the 3.6GBit/s GDDR5 used in the 4870, and 4GBit/s GDDR4 was available in 2007. I guess there are still power savings to be had from GDDR5, but performance-wise I don't think it would have been a huge loss if GDDR5 had been delayed and ATI had to stick with GDDR4.
And another interesting point in your article was definitely about the fate of the 4850. You report that ATI felt that the 4870 was perfectly specced and wasn't changed. I guess that meant they were always targeting the 750MHz core frequency that it launched with. Yet ATI was originally targeting the 4850 at 500MHz clock. With the 4870 being clocked 50% faster, I think it should be obvious to anyone just looking at the clock speed that there would be a huge performance gap between the 4850 and 4870. I believe the X1800XL and X1800XT had a similarly large performance gap. Thankfully Dave Baumann convinced them to clock the 4850 up to a more reasonable 625MHz core.
One thing that I feel was missing from the article was how the AMD acquisition effected the design of the RV770. Perhaps there wasn't much change or the design was already set so AMD couldn't have changed things even if they wanted to, but they must have had an opinion. AMD was probably nervous that they bought ATI at it's height when the R580 was out and top, but once acquired, the R600 came out and underperformed. Would be interesting to know what AMD's initial opinion of ATI's small die, non-top tier targetted strategy was although it now seems to be more consistent with AMD's CPU strategy since they aren't targeting the high-end there anymore either. Reply
hooflung - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThe final frontier market share wise is to steal a major vendor like eVGA. If they can get an eVGA, BFG or XFX to just sell boards with their warranties AMD would be really dominant. Reply
JonnyDough - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThe best thing I've ever read on a tech site. This is why you're better than THG.
Only one typo! It was a "to" when it should have been a "too."
Chalk one up for the red team. This makes my appreciation for AMD rise even more. Anyone willing to disclose internal perspectives about the market like this is a team with less secrecy that I will support with my hard earned cash. So many companies could stand up and take a lesson here from this (i.e. Apple, MS).
Keep articles like this coming, and I'll keep coming back for more.
~Ryan Reply
epyon96 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI have been an avid reader of this site for close to 8 years. I used to read almost every CPU, GPU and novelty gadget articles page to page. But over the years, my patience is much lower and I realize I get just as much enjoyment and information from just reading the first page and last page and skimming a few benchmarks.
However, this is the first article in a while that I spent reading all of it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. These little back stories with a human element in one of the most interesting recent launches provides a refreshing change from boring benchmark-oriented articles.
I hope to find an article based on Nehpalem of a similar nature and other Intel launches.
GFC - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkWow, all i can say is that i loved this review. It was realy enjoyable to read, and i must give my thanks to Anandtech and Carrell! Reply
VaultDweller - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI wish you had gotten greedy! I want to know about RV870, and about nVidia's first DirectX 11 part too.
I had been thinking about building a new gaming rig in Q1 2009, but presently it looks like I'd be spending too much for too little improvement over my current box. I'm hoping that changes by late summer. :) Reply
murray13 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkKudos to you Anand for a G R E A T article!!!
And to AMD/ATI for making this possible!
Now if only AMD on the cpu side could do something similar... Reply
jzodda - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThis is one of the best articles I have read here and there have been so many over the years. In the more then 10+ years I have been coming here I have always enjoyed this site and Anand continues to produce great content. Here's to another 10 years! Reply
pcfxer - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkNot only does anand do engineering, he writes like mad!
"Passion has a funny way of being a person's strongest ally." Reply
prophet001 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkgreat article. thank you for writing this :) Reply
rqle - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkawesome article, very good read, thanks Reply
wingless - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkAnand, you and all the hard working people at this website have just outdone yourselves. You raised the bar yet again.
Your readers are probably as amazed as you are that AMD/ATI came out with such personal and intimate information as to what goes on behind closed doors. Your conclusion is on point as well. Without competition, we know these other companies will run wild with their prices. Unfortunately for us, the fate of competition in both the GPU and CPU market falls on AMD which needs a little financial lovin' right about now.
My strongest desire is that the CPU team over at AMD pulls out all the stops with their next CPU to Bulldoze the competition (or just their prices). We need to make $1000 CPUs a thing of the past. Maybe your site and others can put pressure on AMD to bump up their CPU roadmap about a year so we see Bulldozer in 2010. Reply
Zoomer - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkYup. I have always voted Red with my wallet though! The only two green cards I had were the Riva TNT and the 7600GT. Got rid of that after a couple of months though: it was noisy and the drivers sucked.
Radeon DDR 32MB, Radeon 8500, Radeon 9500Pro (Unlocked ;)), Radeon X800XT, Radeon x1950 Pro, and finally the Radeon 4850!
wingless - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI know that is an unrealistic hope. I understand AMD has made it's road map decisions very carefully given their current situation. I can dream though.... Reply
Bull Dog - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkAwesome article Anand. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I hope for more articles like this in the feature. Many thanks to AMD for letting this happen. Reply
d0nnie - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkLike many said before, this is truly one of the best readings ive had in a long time. Keep up the good work man! Reply
Zar0n - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkGreat article, it's excellent to have the back story of the GPU wars.
It's kind like the planes/tanks on the history channel :)
5* Anandtech Reply
ViperV990 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkAwesome article. Did NOT miss the sea of charts. At all.
Loved every bit of the tale.
Easily the best PR a company can get.
However I was kinda hoping for a little bit more info on the RV670. What did *that* team go through when making the part that is RV770's direct (or no?) predecessor? Reply
Frallan - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - link
Im acctually concidering buying a GFX to support the company that allowed this interview. Its easily one of the best Ive read.
hrishi2das - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkA great article... very well written and personal...
Can Anand with his great contacts get us a backstory on the Core 2 arch. That would be another great article. Reply
malmal - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkAs an NVDA shareholder, having a *huge* amount of unrealised loss in the shares, I bought the 4870 a month ago.
A testament to how good the 4870 is at its price point. It just makes sense. Reply
piesquared - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkAll preferences aside, I have to say that was probably, hands down, the best article i've read in a long, long time. Talk about capturing your audience.
Tremendous insight.
rocky1234 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkWell I must say this is a good article because it is something different good work on this one. I do have to ask this has AMD been making GPU's for 8 years really..ok
I know ATI has for sure but they were not part of AMD then if AMD has been then oops I guess I never owned one of their GPU's before they bought ATI. Reply
nowayout99 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI have to echo the other comments here, wonderful article! One of the best ever on Anandtech.
And thank you, ATI, for giving the community this kind of access to your hard workers. Reply
leonxki - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkWhat a great story. Really shows how long it can take to make a significant change towards a process that is right for the end user. All those external factors e.g no GDDR5 at the time and G80s prosperity can really suck out an engineers motivation. Good thing those few engineers stuck to the task.
The card itself looks so neat and well designed from a bird's eye view. To see how the internals were pateiently designed too is awesome!
The article showed how the RV770 came to life using just words. Time to introduce my pc to life using this card I say :-)
I also join the best-article-I've-read-wagon on this one. Reply
pastyface - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkGreat job on the article! Generally today's reviews consist of me quickly going to the benchmarks portion and seeing if a new game was used or if any screwy results came out. This article however was much different. You had my attention from the get go and I didn't take a break in my reading until the whole article was finished.
It is a real shame that so much of the work in reviews are overlooked in favor of simple graphs but this article was different and I thank you for that. Reply
MarchTheMonth - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI really enjoyed the read, and it really gives me an appreciation for the card i just happen to get (hd 4850).
I may not speak for others, but these are the kind of articles I like to read, the kind that really explain in detail what's really happening. Anand, you did an excellent job of giving perspective (be in ATI's shoes in 2007 when nvidia was doing this...etc) to the article that gave definition between the "so obvious" hindsight we have now to the "this is suicide!" view that it must have seemed like to be there in 2005.
Now, for my own counter-perspective, I can understand why AMD, Intel, and nVidia may not do this very often. On the flip side of the coin, I'm not a mainstream user, and I don't exactly build 1000s of computers that ATI can sell. Bottom line speaking, a story that's interesting to me, I don't bring them $$$$. And on top of that, this story is also giving a lot of info to the competition, which can be at best a double edged sword, and at worst too much information to be self-destructive. Reply
belladog - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkExcellent article, we love this stuff. Benchmarks gets a bit boring after a while.
I wonder what affect if any, the revelations about price fixing(between ATI and Nvidia) had on the pricing of the RV770 GPU's??
I mean if the lawyers hadnt broken up the party maybe the 4870 could have been $80-$100 dearer?
Anyway, interesting article. Reply
Griswold - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThe price fixing took part before AMD bought ATI. And it would be safe to assume that it stopped at the latest at that time, but it probably did stop well before that (the earliest evidence is an e-mail from 2002). AMD should know better than to point the finger at Intel and do something that is equally wrong in another segment of their business. Reply
feelingshorter - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - link
Keep up the good work and never let the haters get you down! There's always people b!tching when they don't know how hard it is to write well (any moron can "write"). But its good stories like this that has been the bread and butter of Anandtech.
The pressure of deadlines, writer's block, or not having enough to write. I appreciate what you do and I know its stressful at times. Others can sympathize but I can empathize having been an amateur journalist myself (in high school and at the university newspaper). Reply
san1s - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkIf this article was about an nvidia GPU then the ati fanboys would proclaim it reeks of bias.
good article though anamdtech Reply
Adul - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThat was one of the best article I read in a while. It was very enjoyable to get an idea of how things are worked out years in advanced of when the product launches.
This was a huge gamble on AMD/ATI part. My hats off to them for having the balls to do something different. Reply
dani31 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkSpeaking of AMD, it would have been nice to have more insight on how the acquisition of ATI fitted in the design process.
But this topic seems to have been deliberately omitted in this article. Reply
JonnyDough - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkMaybe that's because the interviewed the ATI chip designers and not the AMD head haunchos? Just a thought. Reply
lifeobry - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkReally fascinating article. The amount of work put into creating these cards and the competition between the two companies is compelling stuff. Reply
Spivonious - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI totally agree! Articles like this one are what separates Anandtech from the multitude of other tech websites. Reply
goinginstyle - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI have to admit this is one of the best articles I have read anywhere on the web in a long time. It is very insightful, interesting, and even compelling at times. Can you do a follow up, only from an NVIDIA perspective. Reply
Jorgisven - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI totally agree. This article is superbly written. One of the best tech articles I've read in a long long time, out of any source, magazine or online. I highly doubt nVidia will be as willing to expose their faults as easily as ATI was to expose their success; but I could be entirely mistaken on that.
In either case, well done Anand. And well done ATI! Snagged the HD4850 two days after release during the 25% off Visiontek blunder from Best Buy during release week. I've been happy with it since and can still kick around the 8800GT performance like yesterday's news. Reply
JonnyDough - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI agree about the insight especially. Gave us a real look at the decision making behind the chips.
This got me excited about graphics again, and it leaves me eager to see what will happen in the coming years. This kind of article is what will draw readers back. Thank you Anandtech and the red team for this amazing back stage pass. Reply
magreen - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkGreat article! Really compelling story, too.
Thanks AMD/ATI for making this possible!
And thanks Anand for continually being the best on the web. Reply
JPForums - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkLike others have said, this is probably the best article I've read in recent memory. It was IMHO well written and interesting. Kudos to ATI as well for divulging the information.
I second the notion that similar articles from nVidia and Intel would also be interesting. Any chance of AMD's CPU division doing something similar? I always find the architectural articles interesting, but they gain more significance when you understand the reasoning behind the design. Reply
jordanclock - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkThis is easily one of my favorite articles on this website. It really puts a lot of aspects of the GPU design process into perspective, such as the shear amount of time it takes to design one.
I also think this article really adds a great deal of humanity to GPU design. The designers of these marvels of technology are often forgotten (if ever known by most) and to hear the story of one of the most successful architectures to date, from the people that fought for this radical departure... It's amazing, to say the least.
I really envy you, Anand. You get to meet the geek world's superheroes. Reply
pattycake0147 - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI couldn't agree more! This could be the best article I've read here at anandtech period. The performance reviews are great, but once in a while you need something different or refreshing and this is just precisely that. Reply
LordanSS - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkYep, I agree with that. This is simply one of the best articles I've read here.
Awesome work, Anand. Reply
Clauzii - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkI totally agree. Reply
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkNow that is the sort of reason I visit AT every day. Superb article. Thanks Anand. Reply
1078feba - Thursday, December 04, 2008 - linkCouldn't agree more. Quite simply, this is the best article about hardware architecture I have ever had the distinct pleasure of reading. The human perspective adds an element of drama which cannot be underestimated. Very nearly reads like a Hollywood script, a la Jeff Bridges in "Tucker".
Cheers Anand, bravo, well done. Reply
fyleow - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkIs this a typo? Did you mean to say Carrell instead of Carol?
"Carol recalled a story where Rick Bergman and others were at a table discussing RV770; Rick turned to Matt Skynner and asked him if he thought they could really do it, if they could make RV770 a smaller-than-NVIDIA GPU and still be successful, if it was possible to create a halo in the Performance segment." Reply
Kromis - Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - linkWatching too much of "The Office", eh?
I kid, I kid. (Good show, by the way) Reply
erikejw - Sunday, December 07, 2008 - linkA really really good article with lots of good info.
I think though that it is sad that you missed the opportunity to get the best insight you can into future GPU trends and technology for the coming years. That would have been an even better article. Reply
rarson - Monday, April 24, 2017 - linkThis post needs to be preserved for posterity. Reply


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Intel Announces first 22nm 3D Tri-Gate Transistors, Shipping in 2H 2011by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/4/2011 2:05 PM EST
82 Comments
Back to Article
Akaz1976 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkIf we wont see Atoms based ont his tech till 2013, does this mean that ARM camp would be able to come up with a similar solution by then? and thus retain its advantage? Reply
nitrousoxide - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkI'm not sure but is this the same thing as FinFET? TSMC also got that technology, so ARM should be using them in near future. Whether it's 20nm or 14nm is unknown.
Also, are they using them in the entire circuit or just the cache? Reply
DanNeely - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkBoth. Processes are typically demoed first with sRam because it's much easier to make than more complex circuits. Reply
tygrus - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkSRAM array is used because it allows them to test and validate the silicon without having to validate complex logic. It's like making a small logic circuit and testing a sample of 1M except they don't have to make 1000's of CPU's.
They include debug logic to check results and timings. They run through the whole array reading and writing to check frequency limits, estimate leakage and current carrying capabilities all at different voltages/frequency.
With SRAM, the design is much the same as the previous generations so you are testing the silicon not the logic design. it's much easier to determine how far through the array you have got as to where an error occurs. It allows them to test the logic gates in isolation while still being part of a large chip.
Trying to debug a CPU is much harder because it can have many different problems with critical paths, interference, mistakes in the logic design, errors in implementation happening simultaneously and unpredictably. It makes it very hard to locate the problem silicon and at which time the error occurs. The SRAM tests create the design rules by which the CPU can be designed and implemented so you can avoid the limitations and focus on the logic design. Reply
RaynorWolfcastle - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkhttp://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4213622/TS...
This article seems to say that TSMC is going FinFET at 14 nm and everything above will be planar! Considering their 28nm process isn't out yet and that there is a 20nm node before the 14nm, it will be a while before TSMC starts using a non-planar geometry. Reply
JGabriel - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkDidn't TSMC skip 32nm to get to 28nm quicker?
I can see them skippin 20nm and going straight to 14nm, if that'll get them to FinFET sooner. They can't spend 5 years being that far behind Intel technologically. They'll go bankrupt, as would AMD.
I'm wondering if the tech was included in AMD's patent cross-licensing agreement as part of their last settlement with Intel.
. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link32nm was a half-node for TSMC. 20nm(ish) would be a full node from 28nm. To jump from 28nm to 14nm would effectively be skipping a whole node. Reply
blanarahul - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - linkhttp://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/22nm...
Did someone notice a gray curved line in this image between the black and blue ones?
Could it be representing 22 nm planar transistor? Because if it does, the entire idea of moving to 3d transistors was useless for Extreme Edition Desktop CPUs because at full speed they operate at greater than 1.3 volts.
This is an image i made after modifying the original image by Intel. Reply
blanarahul - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - linkI personally think FinFET is useless until 14 nm. Reply
fwip - Friday, January 08, 2016 - linkIt loos like AMD is going to be launching GPUs on TSMC's process in the middle of 2016, 5 years after your comment: http://anandtech.com/show/9886/amd-reveals-polaris...
"A while" was a good estimate. :) Reply
Smooth2o - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkYes, it is, Intel calls it Tri Gate or 3D. But TSMC won't have 22nm technology until 2013 and that's a planar process, not FinFET. They have announced FinFET technology with 450mm wafer technology in 2015-2016. Umm, that's 4-5 years from now, IF that happens....
Huh? The entire die is going to be 22nm Tri Gate (FinFET). They haven't even talked about the increase in speed you get when you use it for memory... Reply
blanarahul - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - linkhttp://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/22nm...
Did someone notice a gray curved line in this image between the black and blue ones?
Could it be representing 22 nm planar transistor? Because if it does the entire idea of moving to 3d transistors was useless for desktop CPUs because they operate at greater than 1.3 volts. Reply
blanarahul - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - linkhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/1329758/power2.jpg
This is an image i made after modifying the original image by Intel! Reply
siromega9 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkOne of the interesting things from one of the promo/detail videos Intel also put out this morning is that this is like a two node jump. So instead of just going from 32nm to 22nm, the actual performance they'll get out of the chip is like jumping from 32nm to 14nm. In historical terms, like jumping from a 2006 65nm Conroe Core 2 CPU to a 2011 32nm Sandy Bridge CPU.
I don't think this will help them in the ARM battle. The difficulty is that while a 22nm Atom might be suitable for tablets, its still probably not integrated enough for smartphones. And from an architecture standpoint, thats one ecosystem (Android and iPhone promise that phone apps will run on the tablet). So an x86 tablet would need to have enough horsepower to emulate a multicore ARM chip plus the GPUs on the ARM chip. Given the possibility of 28nm quad core ARM chips with incredible GPUs, I don't see the Atom being able to emulate that successfully. Reply
megakilo - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkWhy emulation? Android runs fine on x86. The apps are in Java except the NDK part needs to be recompiled even though the system optimization is very important to achieve best performance. Reply
siromega9 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkCorrect, so not Android but iOS apps (which are compiled to ARM code) would need an emulator. Reply
nonzenze - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkBecause ObjectiveC cannot be trivially compiled to x86? The APIs hide all the platform specific junk anyway.
Heck, Apple already has all the source code from the original AppStore submission process, they could quite easily recompile the whole store without any further intervention from developers. Reply
Thinkyhead - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkAs an App Store developer I can assure you, Apple doesn't have any of my source code, and they would require developers to personally rebuild their apps as ARM / x86 universal binaries for new hardware. The iOS virtualizer that comes with XCode actually runs an x86 version of your app, so Apple could quickly handle the switch. Reply
tristangrimaux - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkNope. Not emulation needed for iOS either Reply
Smooth2o - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkIntel Arom is not going to emulate anything. It will run Android apps directly. All apps are at high level coding and can easily be moved to a different architecture. Reply
nimsaw - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI am unable to follow the concept of 'node jump'. Could you please clarify it. Is it just a jump from older manufacturing processes or is there more to it? Reply
JasonInofuentes - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - link"The inversion layer (blue line above) is where the current flow actually happens."
It's sentences like that which make me dream of full color vision. Sigh.
Otherwise, very exciting news!! Reply
qwertymac93 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkhttp://img709.imageshack.us/img709/4571/screenshot...
I've replaced the blue line with an alternating black/white line. Reply
qwertymac93 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkhttp://img811.imageshack.us/img811/4571/screenshot...
Did the same with the "trigate" transistor. Reply
JasonInofuentes - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkI am humbly thankful. Now, could you go back and do the same thing with all my teachers powerpoint slides? Reply
tristangrimaux - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkRight below the Gate Oxide is the inversion layer, a thick line where the current flows. Reply
justaviking - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkCan anyone please explain the term "drive strength"?
It was used several times, but I don't know what it means. Reliability? Longevity? What? Reply
cotak - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkSimple. There's an upper limit to how much current a transistor of a specific size can pass. Increasing drive strength means more current. Reply
justaviking - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkThank you. :-) Reply
Pratheek - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkThought of reducing aspect sizes which in turn increases the chip density would be the only criterion of increasing performance. But they have increased the inversion layer which is truly a mind bending one for performance... Reply
GeorgeH - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkIsn't Intel the only one with the ability to mass produce anything at 22nm right now? 3D sure sounds cool, and the theoretical benefits are easy to see, but how do we know that this isn't a "forced" innovation with PR-spin?
By that I mean has 22nm simply gotten to the point where it's just getting too small to manufacture with reasonable reliability without effectively increasing size by expanding vertically? I know Intel is saying other manufacturers will be staying planar at 22nm, but I wonder if this news means that we can expect more than the usual number of manufacturing issues with those processes. Reply
davepermen - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkof course it's a forced innovation. forced in the sense that they needed to solve a problem.
but still a great one, as it allows to continue going smaller while staying efficient at it (leakage increased for years, harming efficiency.. that one shifted this barrier quite a bit again).
it's like the hitachi (?) get perpendicular song about storing bits vertically: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xPvD0Z9kz8 Reply
GeorgeH - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkBut solve what problem? The problem of "make better transistors" or the more general problem of "manufacture 22nm products without making GF100's engineers blush." If it's the former, fantastic. If it's the latter, it could have interesting implications for the rest of the industry as they follow Intel in making the 22nm transition. Reply
Azethoth - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThis solves the problem of making better transistors. Nobody cares about blushing engineers at nVidia.
More generally, while Moore's law has held, certain patterns in it have not. Years ago heat became a problem to the point where the steady frequency increases just stopped and so multi-core became popular because that was a way to still make use of the extra transistors that stopped getting faster and so maintain a kind of speed increase.
This is an exciting new way to bump up a bunch of the performance characteristics that have languished for years now without much cost. Also it seems that it may scale a bit into the future with the use of more fins. Reply
KarlWa - Monday, May 09, 2011 - linkTheres no reason to think Intel won't open it's fabs to producing non-x86 chips. There are rumours that they want to make A5 chips for Apple, and they may see some gain to getting back in to ARM design if they can use their experience and scale to make the best ARM chips around. They could build a fully-custom ARM SoC platform similar to what NVidia do.
From a business perspective, it looks like a great way to add growth. It depends on how stubborn Intel is willing to be to hold on to the x86 architecture. It's been a big competitive advantage for them until now, but it doesn't look like ATOM is going to make significant headway. Apple are not going to give up the vertical structure of designing their own SoCs, and the big Android licensees are at such pressure to differentiate from each other that they are better suited to the ARM pick-n'-mix model with SoCs from a variety of manufacturers. That could eventually filter down to the PC business with Windows licensees replacing those of Android and the rumours of Apple moving Macs to It's own ARM chips also coming true.
The ARM SoC Market is big business and growing as fast (if not faster) than the already zippy smartphone Market. Intel needs to get involved before it becomes obsolete, and opening its fabs and/or entering the ARM SoC Market are the two best ideas I can think of for them to do it. Reply
krumme - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkThanx for very good explanation
Ofcource the devil is in the detaiils, but the the flexibility for the product portforlio looks very interesting so far. Agree Atom 2013 is the one to look for, as its where things could change more fundamentally. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkThe 5 watt ontario c-50 i at 22nm would scale down to well under 50 mm^2 and probably 2 watts on Intel's superior process. Anything less from intel would be a failure. Of course we know Intel will make it 1 watt and the gpu will be crippled. And no one will buy it but they wont care because they will be able to sell more $900 ivy bridge tablets. Reply
Rockworthy - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkIs this 3D transistor technology going to be owned by Intel or will future ARM chips be able to use this too? Reply
Smooth2o - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkIt's not owned by anyone, it's shared technology, kinda. That's if you can figure out how to do it. Intel won't tell you. TSMC (ARM) will have it in 2015 or 2016, however, they are already one node late on that chart, so maybe longer.... Reply
DanNeely - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkIntel might be able to patent some implementation details, but the basic finFET idea has been in academia for over 20 years and is unpatentable as a result. Reply
phazerz - Friday, May 06, 2011 - linkIt would be those "implementation details" that are the valuable IP, seeing as how FinFETs have been known for 20 years yet nobody to date apparently has found a way to mass-produce them economically. Reply
lordmetroid - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkHow are these transistors in the image suppose to do anything, I do not see any circuitry. No NAND gates or anything, just transistors sitting on a piece of silicon substrate. Do the images actually show meaningful circuits or simply transistors?
In case they do show real circuitry, how are these different sets of transistors connected to each other? Reply
BrightCandle - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkThe images in this article only show single transistors. NAND gates are made from a small clump (trying to remember my CS....I'm going with 3 transistors IIRC) and then more advanced logic can be built up from there. Reply
nirmv - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkNAND is made from 4 transistors. Reply
ironargonaut - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkThese just show transistors and they are connected with very small wires. Reply
3tire - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkYou build them from transistors. Reply
Akaz1976 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkSo based on comments here, with this innovation coming to atom next year (or maybe 2013) intel would have a 2-4 year lead on ARM manufacturers?
Would this mean that Atom will become competitive in Tablets and Smartphones by 2013? Reply
ViRGE - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkFrom the press conference notes I've read, Intel expects to have a 3 year lead on any other fab implementing this (or any similar) technology. That's consistent with everyone else implementing it on the node past 22nm (normally 14nm). Reply
Lucian Armasu - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkNo. Intel is already 1 node ahead of ARM but that hasn't helped them catch up to ARM yet. Even this technology won't reduce the gap in energy efficiency that much, but it will get them closer. ARM chips will be made at 28nm next year. Atom will still be made at 32 nm (it's at 45 nm now). Intel only uses their latest node technology on their high-end chips. Reply
marc1000 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkhow long will it take to come to market?
what do I do now??? wait another year or so, or buy sandy-bridge this year?
changing CPU+MOBO for every new processor is tiresome... Reply
cmptrdude79 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkQuoting Wikipedia, "Ivy Bridge processors will be backwards compatible with the Sandy Bridge platform." No socket change. It's just the 22nm refresh, although it definitely looks like it'll hit higher clock speeds and be far more energy efficient. Reply
marc1000 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linklet us hope intel does not kill socket 1155 in 1 year like they did to 1156 then.... Reply
marc1000 - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkBTW, this news went live on a local television at Brazil... in the same day of the announcement... Intel is working HARD on marketing! Reply
Azethoth - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkDepends on what you want. Sandy bridge is not their high performance architecture. Ivy bridge is. So if you want to write email you keep your current system. If you want to game or get high scores in folding@home and need that extra bit of CPU oomph then, like me, you wait. Reply
iwod - Wednesday, May 04, 2011 - linkI dont think Atom was ever designed with Smartphone in mind. It was more like Tablet PC, Nettop and Netbook, and trying to scale it down to so called MID segment.
The problem is Smartphone in itself is a totally different thing, and by volume or revenue is larger then all those segment mentioned above combined.
Tablet PC, Nettop/Book and MID are like PC in different form factor. You try to squeeze PC hardware and software into it. Like Windows 7.
Smartphone runs on its own set of Software. That is why I think Intel should take the chance to truly design a CPU without the crap, like MMX, SSE, 286 / 386 / 486 compatibility, and just focus on x86-64 + AVX + FMA as basic.
And may be calling it as AE86.
That combine with 22nm and Tri Gate should level the gap between Atom and ARM A15. Reply
joelypolly - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThis announcement with the recent rumour that Apple wants to use Intel to do future processor manufacturing would potentially make the A6 processor very interesting. It should be a significant step up both for performance and power consumption. Perhaps a phone that lasts more than 2 days with regular use is near. Reply
synaesthetic - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI'd take a phone that lasts more than ONE day with regular (admittedly somewhat heavy) use... :) Reply
Lucian Armasu - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThe rumor said Intel wants to make chips for Apple, not the other way around. Very different thing. Reply
AnotherGuy - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkWth ever happened to AMD... Bulldozer or did it get totally scratched?
The only good things i hear about them is in the graphics department... did they fire all the CPU Engineers? Reply
silverblue - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkBulldozer and Llano are due to come on sale within the next two months if reports are to be believed. Both should at least be fully unveiled in June. Reply
chukked - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkmultitaking here means a lot of data switching or swapping contentiously in cpu
i am a big multitasker, three vm running for java and db servers and a lot of opera + firefox woth 400+ tabs opened, and many pdf opened (8 GB RAM)
i look at least 2 MB cache per core in processor (without integrated graphics core) running at full processor speed.
(i will prefer or choose a processor with more cache rather then the core count, cache size matter to me more then core counts, beyond four cores i am looking for more cache rather then more cores)
for the processors having integrated graphics core also then the additional 4 MB cache should be there to supplement graphics core.
now the multitasking performance of my core 2 due with 6 MB cache is at par with i7 6 MB cache (it has not increased by any considerable percentage to appreciate)
so i am very frustrated with i7 series on 32nm that rather then adding more cache, they wasted all technology advances to graphics core plus reduced cache also so as to make it slower on multitasking
when talking on integrated graphics, i want to consider first four cores + 10 MB cache at least then the grasphics core (i am ok with integrated graphics mediocre performance up to to run regular multimedia and 2D games as if i need more graphics power i will add a graphics card but if i do not have a lot od cache to swap quickly i am doomed and performance is back to pentium era )
exp users of multitasking kindly add your comments
P.S. Dear Anand thanks for your informative and technology specs influencer website, could you please make a separate single task and multitasking test cases and reviews in your performance review articles as multitasking is what multicore processor claims they arw good at. Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkCan you even relate cache size to speed across multiple architectures?
Get an SSD and use it as the system drive. Reply
Azethoth - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link400 tabs eh. When you start up your browser, how many hours does it take to fetch fresh pages from the internets? After they are ready for display, how many days does it take you to cycle through all tabs and see whats new? Do you lose track of where you are and have to restart? Inquiring minds want to know. Reply
smut - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link400 tabs? WTF, elaborate please! Reply
chukked - Friday, May 06, 2011 - linkmultiple portable opera browser sessions, each for different subject and having a lots of tabs, just see it as each one serving as a research, collection workspace.
right now this anandtech session alone has 57 tabs from 3-jan-2011 covering intel i7
no it does not take eternity to load, they all open simultaneously, i have tweaked cache setting of opera and firefox both but firefox only one session runs unlike opera so i mostly use opera.
anyway i use bartab plugin in firefox which prevent opera from loading any tab except the one having focus, so loading is not an issue. and yes it has more then 400 tabs even after i splitted it in to separate folders one is tech and another is science and energy (cold fusion is exotic).
a big cache alone is capable to improve the system response time by a big factor even your ssd can not do anything moreover it prevents system hang and windows crash altogether when you are switching programs to programs very quickly. Reply
banvetor - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkOne point that I didn't see anyone talking about is the apparent change in the CMOS design paradigm that smaller technologies mean smaller transistor length (L).
From the slides available at Intel website (of which some are shown here), it seems that in this new 22nm 3D transistor, the technology resolution corresponds to the gate width (W), and not length...
It's interesting to think how this change will affect the chip design... Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThis is probably why intel's stock price jumped 20% a couple weeks ago. So now we know how long the banksters have the inside info. Anyway it is just a pump and dump scheme. If you look at the "Transistor Gate Delay" chart carefully, you will notice that each new process node yields a similar improvement. If you actually compare regular planar gates at 32nm vs regular planar gates at 45nm, you see the same ~25% improvement. In reality this particular innovation (the waffling) is only good for a few percent. So are we really to believe that a bit of waffling is the best Intel can do this year? If so, they are in trouble. I think their marketing department is doing even more waffling than their engineers. Reply
marc1000 - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linksecond! Reply
fic2 - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkIntel CEO made an announcement a couple of weeks ago that their 22nm tech would be revolutionary but wouldn't say anything more than that.
If this is Intel "waffling" wtf are other companies doing? Intel is way ahead of everybody else. This puts them further ahead. If Intel is in trouble all the other companies are just walking dead then. Reply
albundy12345 - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkOr, maybe their stock price jumped because they pocketed 1 billion dollars a month for the last half a year. Reply
ironargonaut - Friday, May 06, 2011 - linkYou have totally disregarded the power savings mentioned in the article and elsewhere. The more power you save the higher you can make the frequency which increase the performance. So in effect pwr savings equals performance boost.
Remember when Intel reduced the leakage current significantly? Remember the raging success of that part? Reply
iwod - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI think this is bad news, because it give a a strong, and one more reason to wait for Ivy Bridge.
But does any one know if Ivy will have FMA yet? Reply
silverblue - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkNot as far as I've heard, but Haswell will definitely implement FMA3. Bulldozer supports FMA4 and AMD is playing a wait-and-see game to figure out which is the more successful (and will probably eventually support both, I expect).
I read into it a bit and found that AMD originally planned FMA3 as part of SSE5. Intel hit back with FMA4, THEN changed their minds and went for FMA3, whilst AMD changed to FMA4. All this playing silly buggers makes it hard to keep track of anything. Reply
DanNeely - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThe worst part is that it became a mess because they weren't talking to each other after making their initial proposals. Intel looked at FMA3 and decided it was better. AMD decided that even though FMA3 was better than 4, it wasn't enough better to justify supporting it when Intels volume would make FMA4 the default implementation used by 99% of software in a few years. By the time AMD found out about Intel's change it was too late to revert bulldozer. Reply
grodrigues - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkI don't know much about processors, so maybe my question is stupid. But can someone explain to me why ARM processors are more efficient than Intel's Atom? Reply
Lucian Armasu - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkTo put it simply, the x86 architecture is more bloated than ARM. Reply
BoyBawang - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkX86 is a bloated old pig from the 70's. No matter how you put lipstic it's still a PIG! Reply
Libra4US - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkThe picture only show the pattern of just isolated transistors themselves.
After adding the needed contacts, let's see what they look like and how dense they are as working transistors. Reply
etamin - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - linkso is there any chance SNB-EX will be built on this new 22nm process? shipping in 2H 2011 sounds possible... Reply
fire400 - Thursday, May 05, 2011 - link2007 was to be the debut.
good thing it wasn't built off of the GHz war though. Reply
dealcorn - Friday, May 06, 2011 - linkAs I read this, voltage tunes transistor switching speed (and cpu speed potential) Intel may vary voltage and cpu speed based on demand resulting in both better peak performance and substantially greater average efficiency. At peak performance, it sounds like efficiency may increase by something like 37%. Efficiency improvements at lower performance levels are greater. Efficiency is appreciated in the server room.
Intel has spent years and trying to position itself to gain access to the phone cpu market. Is a 40-50% improvement in power efficiency adequate to get Intel a seat at the table? Reply
ProDigit - Friday, May 06, 2011 - linkIt'd be nice to see the first Atom processors being built on this technology!
They'd be between 2 and 2,2Ghz, yet have a thermal footprint of lower than current atom processors!
This is excellent material for netbooks and tablet pc's, as well as servers and gaming consoles!
If intel get's it's head out of it's ass, they would NOT bring this to the entry level laptops and office desktops; but first test this technology on netbooks, tablets, and gamer processors!
Once it's proven there are not too many issues with the technology, and overclocking laws have been established by multitude of overclockers, it might be interesting to tackle the server, business, and entry (budget) laptop market!
But netbooks and tablets first, because they are in dire need for low power solutions, and gamers too, because they would like to discover the potential higher overclocking capabilities!
The technology is not established and trusted well enough to enter the server and business markets yet! Reply