What you quoted refers to Intel's efforts to act as a fab for external customers.
raptor lake is the same as coffee lake/comet lake? nah
Re:Intel's Humbling
by TechnicalVault on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @05:12AM
(#39202020)
Depends who your user is. From a desktop side you're probably not going to notice because desktop CPU requirements have been stagnant for years, desktop is all about GPU. On the server side Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids is Intel getting back in the game and the game is power and market share.
See there's only 2 or 3 more obvious generations of obvious die shrinks available. Beyond those generations we'll have to innovate some other way, so whoever grabs the fab market for these modes now gets a longer period to enjoy the fruits of their innovation.
Meanwhile server CPU TDPs are hitting the 400W+ mark and DC owners are looking dubiously at big copper busbars, die shrinks tend to reduce the Watts per Calculation so they're appealing. In the current power market, more efficient computing translates into actual savings on your power bill. There's still demand for better processors, even if we are sweating those assets for 5-7 years now.
Intel is still behind TSMC at this point in terms of raw process efficiency, but that rate of change is moving quickly and I posit that the products released later this year will have a process efficiency advantage over AMD's offerings for the first time since AMD abandoned global foundry.
In the terms of end product - not really. Last 3-4 gens are indistinguishable to the end user. It's a combined effect of marketing failure and really underwhelming gains - when marketing screams "breakthrough gen", but what you get is +2%/ST perf for another *Lake, you can't sell it.
They might've built a foundation and that might be a deliberate tactics to get back into the race, we'll see. But i'm not convinced for now.