Anyone else think Steam Machines are going to be a massive flop?

[Soleron]

fatslob-:O said:

Soleron said:

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@Bold Do you have a source for that ? It doesn't make any sense considering the fact that most of the gains come from using FinFet transistors and how would a different transistor technology be related to chip area scaling ? If that were the case it still wouldn't make any sense for globalfoundries to license samsung's 14nm technology. 

OK, I'm possibly wrong on the first part - it may be and not or. However, if you can tell me to which "industry planar 20nm process" the 15% figure refers to that'd be great. I think they're outright lying on that one.

It's true that globalfoundries may have had alot of issues and delays in the past but at this point they've likely cancelled their 20nm process node and I don't think their customers would like to be held out for that long but to claim absolutely NO PRODUCTION of commercial 14nm wafers until 2016 sounds a bit overly critical. 

Yeah it's just that I don't trust them to deliver when they failed to do so at 32, 28, 20 and their own 14. I agree, their customers will be very upset. But they need GF as a second source to Samsung. The rest of the industry only has a TSMC vs Samsung choice right now, because they have no access to Intel and wouldn't pick GF as a first source.

What amount of chip area scaling did Intel claim for their 14nm process ? The way I see it this isn't about minimum feature sizes anymore until extreme ultraviolet lithography comes into the picture as the semconductor manufacturing industry has redefined it to about surpassing limits of last generation process technology. I remember them only claiming a chip area scaling of 35% better than TSMC's 20nm process node so in that sense Intel's 14nm process node also isn't a real 14nm node.

This is the slide: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/14nm-2.png

Intel is saying 22->14 scaling will be better than their own 32->22 scaling. That's the important takeaway.

TSMC has always been denser anyway, that's why "only" 35% vs TSMC. However, despite being less dense, Intel's always had a technologically better process than TSMC (superior frequency/power curve). It's a tradeoff for density vs power vs performance. TSMC can't run their chips at 3.6GHz like Intel, and if they did they'd be 200W monsters.

Intel's 14nm process node and Samsung's 14nm process node are closer than you think it is. 

I see Samsung 14nm as basically Intel 22nm.