So if AMD can keep tuning their designs and get 10% better performance with each generation, along with faster ramp of die shrinks, who will be laughing then? (Hopefully this ain't just a pipe dream/vaporware)

@john42. I agree that there is more to CPU design than just die shrinks. If you were to compare AMD and Intel CPUs on the same node, AMD CPUs are more competitive (except for Bulldozer that was first gen of new arch). Intel are ahead in the game at the moment simply because they are one to two process nodes ahead. AMD CPUs are now better designed and tweaked after 2.5 generations. Kaveri will be gen 3. And as it happily turns out, this new CPU/APU architecture scales down better for efficiency than up. Once they catch up on die shrink, Intel will be outdone - in fact Temash has outdone them. The green tortoise and the blue hare. You know, with traditional PC sales down (and eventually big chip servers too) and Intel heavily weighted in engineering and management resources towards big powerful processors, I wonder how they're going to keep open those big expensive foundries that have given them the edge year after year. This is an issue that has been recently raised elsewhere on the net. Watch for negative signs after 2Q2013 when Haswell sales fail to impress.

But AMD is first to market - with Temash. Bay Trail is many months away. By the time Bay Trail comes out on 22nm, AMD will be moving on to its 4th gen core, most likely at 20nm. BTW, Intels 22nm is regarded by the rest of the industry as 26nm.

Quote: "In fact, GF's 14nm process may have smaller features than Intel's 14nm process because, says Mojy Chian senior vp at Globalfoundries, because "Intel's terminology doesn't typically correlate with the terminology used by the foundry industry. For instance Intel's 22nm in terms of the back-end metallisation is similar to the foundry industry's 28nm. The design rules and pitch for Intel's 22nm are very similar to those for foundries' 28nm processes."

Jean-Marc Chery, CTO of STMicroelectronics points out that the drawn gate length on Intel's ˜22nm" process is actually 26nm.

Furthermore Intel's triangular fins, which degrade the advantages of finfet processing could underperform GF's rectangular fins which optimise the finfet advantage."

http://www.electronicswee...no-process-advantage.html

You're quoting a customer of GloFo who is probably cherry picking their "facts" to play down the fact that they're using an inferior process, because last I checked nothing can compete with Intel's performance or power metrics.

Not to mention Broadwell wafers are already taped out and being debugged, so 22nm is now old.

How do you know he's not wrong. Btw, no one other than Intel has done a x86 chip at 22nm. so there is nothing to compare with Intel's "superior" fab process at this stage. 14nm will be more apples with apples.

How do you know he's right? Intel doesn't publish specs and there's probably dozens of different VLSI parameters. 22 nm has to be coming from somewhere within the process, following an industry standard. Otherwise Intel would be getting sued from both competition and investors for misrepresenting their technology.

You have an answer for everything! How about an answer to this: Intergraph vs Intel (1997). This is what happens when a company sues the Intel juggernaut... and wins. Intel then forces them into bankruptcy. Fricken evil, eh?

http://www.fudzilla.com/h...ver-wanted-to-sue-samsung