Speeds and Feeds

I honestly don't know whether Om Malik's blog site, GigaOM, is intended to be informative or merely entertaining. I pointed out a previous example of the overwrought rhetoric that permeates that site last September (in the context of Comcast's then-new usage cap policy), but generally, I try to ignore the nonsense there for the same reasons that I ignore talk radio.

But like it or not, GigaOM is widely read, and sometimes when a post there bears directly on a market that's important to me, I can't bear to let it go. This is one of those times.

On Thursday, a GigaOM staffer wrote a piece titled "Can Intel Thrive in a Post x86 World?"

A slide from Fred Weber's keynote presentation at Microprocessor Forum 2003 showing how x86 will evolve into systems from big servers down to handheld consumer devices.

(Credit: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.)

The headline is preposterous from beginning to end. It has two implications just in the eight words of the title: that Intel's ability to "thrive" faces any imminent threats, and that the importance of the x86 architecture is declining.

In January, the same staffer wrote a piece titled "Netbooks and the Death of x86 Computing" which reached the fantastic conclusion that Netbooks would "destroy the hegemony of x86 machines for personal computing."

Well, as I pointed out just a few weeks later (in "The Netbook is dead. Long live the notebook!"), when the Netbook phenomenon ran up against the dominance of Intel and Microsoft in the PC market, it was the Netbook that died instead. Even at a $300 price point, people still want full PC compatibility.

Yes, there are companies like Freescale (the subject of the January post on GigaOM) and Nvidia that are looking to push the ARM architecture into the Netbook space. But that idea never made much sense, and now that Intel and TSMC are working together to get Intel's Atom x86 core into lower-cost SoC (system on chip) products, the ARM architecture will eventually have to retreat into the shrinking niche for supersmall, supercheap phones and consumer electronics gizmos for which x86 compatibility is of negligible value.

See, we learned a long time ago--those of us who cover this industry professionally, not just as a random assignment for some random blog--that the instruction set architecture (ISA), per se, doesn't matter any more.

The choice of ISA was a big deal in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the extra complexity of an x86 instruction decoder was a large fraction of the total complexity of a microprocessor. That's where the conflict between RISC and CISC came from.

But by the turn of the century, ISA complexity was almost a dead issue, and that coffin's final nail was pounded in by the keynote speech of then-Advanced Micro Devices CTO Fred Weber at Microprocessor Forum 2003, an event I had the honor of hosting.

In his talk, "Towards Instruction Set Consolidation," Weber made a simple point: "Technology has passed the point where instruction set costs are at all relevant."

Even then, three generations of process technology ago, the "x86 penalty" was down to a couple square millimeters of silicon. Today, the comparable figure is about 0.25 square millimeters. Not zero, certainly, but not a significant concern for chips that are a hundred times larger.

In short, ARM chips aren't cheaper or more power-efficient because of their instruction sets; they're like that because they're designed to be. And anything that an ARM chip can do to save cost or power can also be done by an x86 chip.

So there can't ever be a time when the world moves beyond x86. That's 1980s thinking, just plain ignorance of what may be the most important trend in the microprocessor industry.

The rest of Thursday's GigaOM post is a hopelessly self-contradictory muddle that fails to reach any clear conclusions. I'll just quote one more line near the end: "But the PC will be just one small (and shrinking) battleground to keep x86 relevant, amid a more mobile, visual, and power-sensitive world."

Current economic woes aside, the PC market is hardly shrinking. You know what's shrinking? The PC! As the PC shrinks, the PC market will grow. The MID (mobile Internet device) market isn't much to speak of right now, for example, but once MID makers figure out what to build, MIDs will become more popular.

And seriously, is anyone really not clear on the fact that the Apple iPhone is a computer? It isn't an embedded system. An embedded system is one in which the presence of a microprocessor is functionally irrelevant to the user. When a gizmo exposes its programmability to the user, it's a computer.

What else is the App Store but the visible manifestation of the iPhone's programmability?

Now, ARM isn't dead yet. The iPhone uses an ARM processor because there's no x86 processor that would work as well in that system. ARM processors will probably see at least two more generations in cell phones just because there's so much ARM-based software out there (including all the software on the App Store).

But somewhere around 2012, we're going to see x86 chips poking into that space. The value of instruction set compatibility with the PC market will persuade developers of new cell phone platforms to go with x86 chips, and eventually even established systems like the iPhone will switch over.

So not only are x86 chips selling into a growing PC market, they'll eventually start eating into ARM's own strongholds. That can't be bad for Intel.

And that's why the GigaOM piece was preposterous.

Don't get me wrong-- I think the Intel-TSMC alliance announced earlier this week is a good thing for both companies.

But the official explanation, that Intel wants TSMC's help to make Atom processor cores more widely available to the industry, just doesn't strike me as a sufficient reason for the deal.

Intel hardly needs TSMC's help to make SoCs (systems on a chip). Intel has been making highly integrated devices for the embedded market, as well as PC chipsets for a long time. It already has enough of the building blocks and enough experienced engineers to make Atom-based SoC products.

And it isn't as if Intel needs better process technology, or more fabrication capacity. Intel already has more of the best fabs in the world than any other company.

What's the one thing TSMC can do that Intel can't? Operate with low gross margins. In its most recent quarter, TSMC's gross margin was only 31.3 percent, while Intel's gross margin is still an industry benchmark at 53 percent. The difference is more than Intel's net profit--that is, if Intel had TSMC's gross margins, it would be losing money.

Low-margin component suppliers are a critical element of the embedded-systems market, which Intel identified as one of its target markets for this deal. Cost is king in consumer electronics, so high-margin suppliers like Intel rarely get a chance to participate.

Similarly, as average PC-selling prices decline, a growing share of the demand for processors and chipsets drops into price ranges in which Intel just can't afford to play.

The TSMC deal is Intel's way of taking a piece of these businesses without spending much money or taking much risk. For example, TSMC is already accustomed to helping its customers make SoCs for embedded systems. Intel could build such a business itself, but not at the margins it's used to.

Intel said in its press release that it will be porting its Atom cores to TSMC's technology. This is the sort of work that can get expensive in engineering time, but it's possible that the work will be made easier by a convergence between TSMC's processes and Intel's.

Last May, Intel agreed to cooperate with TSMC and Samsung in the transition to larger 450-millimeter silicon wafers (a little less than 18 inches across, up from the 12-inch wafers used today).

This doesn't necessarily mean that the three companies will co-develop fully compatible manufacturing processes, but with the 450mm transition being slated for 2012, there's still plenty of time left to drop that other shoe.

Anyway, this new TSMC deal is merely at the earliest official stage. The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding, but they have yet to work out the details. That could take a year, and it could be another year or two before Atom-based chips are ready to start rolling through the TSMC factory.

All in all, Atom SoCs might not become available from TSMC until 2012, at which point, they could, in principle, be made on a common Intel-TSMC process.

Not that Intel would provide its really good process technology to TSMC. In chips, as in other things, quality is expensive. Intel's best process technology, which it uses primarily for microprocessors, is at the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing, with features such as a metal electrode acting as the transistor's gate, a hafnium-based insulation between the gate and the channel, and strained silicon in the transistor channel itself (where the current flows when the transistor is on). (See this Intel presentation for more details. Incidentally, did Intel ever announce which metal it's using? If so, I can't find it.)

TSMC may not need or want any of these features, and it would make sense for Intel to keep its best process technology to itself, anyway, if only to protect its high profit margins.

Even without a leading-edge process, TSMC can still make good money from Atom-based SoCs in the embedded market. That's enough to justify TSMC's participation in the deal.

But I'm not sure that explains Intel's motivation. Sure, Intel will make money it wouldn't have made otherwise, but it will also have costs it wouldn't have had otherwise. Intel may make a few bucks per chip in intellectual-property licensing fees, and perhaps this could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but that isn't a whole lot of money to a company like Intel, which makes tens of billions of dollars a year in gross revenue.

Why else would Intel be doing this deal?

Well, I think that the chipmaker could be setting itself up to kill off three of its biggest rivals.

There's already an x86 processor company using TSMC to make (some of) its chips: Via Technologies. Via isn't a big player, but it's been a thorn in Intel's side ever since it purchased the x86 processor operations of IDT (WinChip) and National Semiconductor (Cyrix) in 1999.

Via specializes in exactly the kind of processors that Intel can't afford to sell: low-cost, highly efficient designs aimed at low-cost PCs and embedded systems. Today's Atom is better than Via's best chips, but it's also more expensive. A cheaper TSMC-sourced alternative will hurt Via badly.

Most of the same reasoning applies to ARM, which licenses its processor cores to be used in SoCs made at TSMC, among other fabs. That's almost the same business model Intel is adopting with its own TSMC deal.

ARM dominates the market for microprocessors in cell phones. Intel's current Atom processors are too expensive and too power-hungry for that market. But remember, it'll be a couple of years at least before Atom-based chips start shipping from TSMC. The Atom cores of 2011 or 2012 will be more directly competitive with ARM's cores.

So put ARM on the endangered-species list too.

There's one other company that ought to be worried by this deal, and it probably isn't one you'd expect: Nvidia.

Nvidia is generally thought to be TSMC's biggest customer. It doesn't make x86 processors (though there are persistent rumors that the company is developing one), but it does make the ARM-based Tegra family, which would run up against these future Atom chips.

It's Nvidia's graphics chips that I'm worried about, however.

Intel is developing graphics chips of its own under the Larrabee code name. I wrote about Larrabee last August, and it seemed like a bad idea to me at the time. One of my key objections, however, was that graphics chips are inherently a low-margin business due to the strong competition between AMD and Nvidia, and I didn't think that Intel could afford to drag down its margins just to compete in that market.

The TSMC deal changes all that.

Larrabee's cores aren't Atom cores, per se, but they're similar enough that Intel might consider them to be covered by the language in the TSMC partnership announcement. Or if not, agreements can always be expanded later.

Making Larrabee chips at TSMC would solve the margin problem, putting Intel's graphics chips on a level playing field with Nvidia's. Larrabee would still be at a significant disadvantage because its x86-based design isn't as well-suited to graphics acceleration as Nvidia's chips, but Intel has a special ability to sell inferior products along with other chips its customers need--especially processors. That's reportedly how Intel's slow integrated-graphics chipsets ended up in so many systems during the Windows Vista transition, leading to many disappointed customers.

Or it's possible that Intel will not allow the TSMC deal to harm these companies, if only because Intel may still be in court defending itself against AMD's antitrust lawsuit.

But I wouldn't make that assumption, and I bet that ARM, Nvidia, and Via won't either. Intel isn't the only paranoid company in this industry.

Intel announced on Monday that it will be presenting a paper at Siggraph 2008 about its "many-core" Larrabee architecture, which will be the basis of future Intel graphics processors.

The paper itself, however, has already been published, and I was able to get a copy of it. (Unfortunately, as you'll see at that link, the paper is normally available only to members of the Association for Computing Machinery.)

Intel's Larrabee includes "many" cores, on-chip memory controllers, a wide ring bus for on-chip communications, and a small amount of graphics-specific logic.

(Credit: Intel)

The paper is a pretty thorough summary of Intel's motives for developing Larrabee and the major features of the new architecture. Basically, Larrabee is about using many simple x86 cores--more than you'd see in the central processor (CPU) of the system--to implement a graphics processor (GPU). This concept has received a lot of attention since Intel first started talking about it last year.

... Read more

Today, NVIDIA officially announces its new GeForce GTX 200 family of graphics processing units (GPUs) and the first two products in the family, the GeForce GTX 280 and the GeForce GTX 260.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 graphics chip

(Credit: NVIDIA Corporation)

The GeForce GTX 280 is the new flagship of NVIDIA's GPU product line, taking over from last year's GeForce 9800 GTX. (The change in the product-name format from "9800 GTX" to "GTX 280" is potentially confusing and doesn't seem that useful to me, but I'm sure we'll get used to it over time. I suppose NVIDIA's other choice was to go with numbers above 10,000, which might have been even worse.)

NVIDIA disclosed the details of these products at an Editor's Day conference in May, and most of the attendees, including myself, received GTX 280 graphics cards for editorial review. These cards are NVIDIA reference boards, not retail products.

I'll be doing this review in multiple parts, each addressing a different aspect of these products and the effects they'll have on the PC graphics market.

First, an overview of the GTX 280 chip itself.

This is a huge chip. NVIDIA won't say exactly how large, and I'm not going to bust open the chip package on my reference board just to find out, but NVIDIA VP of technical marketing Tony Tamasi says ... Read more

Graphics performance improves rapidly. We can be confident that each new generation of graphics chips will be faster than the previous one, and that AMD and NVIDIA will regularly surpass each other with new product launches. I've been watching this process professionally since 1996, when I began covering graphics technology for Microprocessor Report.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 graphics chip

(Credit: NVIDIA Corporation)

As of today, NVIDIA is on top. The new GeForce GTX 280 is the fastest graphics chip you can get. See the first part of this review for details of the chip itself.

If you can get one, anyway. NVIDIA says boards based on the GeForce GTX 280 and its companion GeForce GTX 260 will be available "in quantity" tomorrow (June 17), but if previous launches are any indication, those quantities won't be enough to satisfy everyone.

And you may not be able to afford one-- a GTX 280 board with 1GB of RAM will likely be priced around $649, while GTX 260 boards with 896MB will go for about $399. (The GTX 280 / 1GB board I tested was made by NVIDIA, so it isn't necessarily representative of commercial products.)

But avid gamers won't be discouraged by these prices. Both AMD and NVIDIA like to point out that an expensive graphics card is a much better investment than a high-end CPU or motherboard if you care about gaming.

The standard of comparison for gaming performance is the number of frames per second that can be rendered for a given combination of screen resolution and quality features... or, conversely, what resolution and features can be used without reducing the frame rate below a playable level.

So in my own testing, I used frame rate as a metric for games that could run acceptably with maximum quality at the maximum resolution of my monitor (1,600 x 1,200 pixels), and quality for other games.

I did my testing with four games: ... Read more