Re:Intel can’t supply 14nm Xeons, HPE recommends AMD Epyc
by MrRadar on Friday September 07, 2018 @07:38PM
(#17938437)
In addition to the benefits of getting working more working chips per wafer, don't chiplets also provide the benefit of being able to independently bin each chiplet, significantly increasing the effective production yield of high-clocking high core count chips relative to monolithic fabrication?
Intel's XCC die is 694mm^2 for a 28-core, while Zen / Zeppelin is 213mm^2 for an 8-core. Intel's XCC 28 core is around 25mm^2 per core, while AMD's Zen is 26.6mm^2 per core... suggesting a slight advantage to Intel!
Furthermore: Intel's XCC die has 28-cores. When defects come into XCC, Intel can simply disable those cores and sell them for cheaper. For example, Intel's Xeon Platinum 8160 is a 24-core. Presumably, 4-cores are defective but Intel can still sell it for $5000 or so.
So a defective product would require a manufacturing defect somewhere critical. But individual cores can most certainly be disabled during the manufacturing process and sold as a lower tier product, like the Xeon Platinum 8160
As such, Intel definitely has good yields, at least on 14nm production.
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The main advantage is that AMD's strategy works way better when yields are poor due to a new process being not fully understood. But as defect rates drop, Intel's monolithic strategy seems to have slight advantages over AMD's. (Remember: Intel's cores are slightly superior in IPC, have slightly faster caches, and AVX512 enabled).
AMD's strategy is definitely good, but I don't think Intel is really that far behind.