https://liliputing.com/2021/12/lilbits-ces-2022-will-likely-be-subdued-as-com...
 
The new strain of Omicron Covid has likely killed off a physical CES show again for this year as major presenters are now dropping the show right and left again to protect their key people's health.

They still may have the show for the now fashionable liberal anti-vax crowd to show up and get all infected with Omicron Covid variants,


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https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-leads-growth-in-ic-industry-2021

AMD Leads Growth in IC Industry for 2021, Intel Shrinks Alone

The whole year of business roll ups are beginning to come in, and Intel's last minute blip or single well timed (and well price supported) ray of Alder Lake performance sunshine does not make up for a generally gloomy total 2021 year picture for Intel.

According to IC Insights, the top 17 semiconductor companies are bound for a combined $460 billion figure in Integrated Circuits (IC) sales for 2021. All 17 companies have now surpassed the $10 billion mark, but like in most markets, the top companies typically hold the vast majority of sales. Intel, Samsung and TSMC are projected to account for around $210 billion of the industry's total sales revenue, and Intel seems to have no chance but to hand the semiconductor crown to Samsung.

In fact, Intel is the only player in the top 17 not posting a positive gain for 2021, instead posting a 1% contraction in sales.  This is -11% effective to the industry average growth of +10%.  That translates to about $800 million less money in the bank. The company has been facing supply issues for longer than other manufacturers, mostly related to the various delays with its 10nm and 7nm products. The company even started porting some of its semiconductor designs (e.g. Comet Lake) to less technologically-advanced production nodes. The fact that the company took so long to ramp up its 10nm SuperFin technology also meant that a highly competent AMD could wreak havoc with Intel's portfolio through solid execution — and more than a little help from TSMC's expertise.

AMD itself, which has been executing on its roadmaps with a cadence that once would have made the old Andy Grove at Intel proud, AMD is expected to post an incredible 65% revenue growth compared to its 2020 results, going from $9.7 billion in 2020 to $16 billion, and breaking the $10 billion milestone. NXP and Analog Devices will also seemingly manage to hit that mark. MediaTek comes in behind AMD with its also tremendous 60% growth, buoyed by high-performance Arm designs and by the company's 5G portfolio.

So, 10nm super fin (alias the BS renamed "Intel 7") simply came too late and too little to help Intel keep its overall ranking in the industry.   This also brings up the lack of current general lithography supply issues within Intel again as there are not enough 10nm super fin lithography lines to run all the chips needed to move Intel forward in any sort of sufficiently fast fashion.



A Deep Breath and a pause for reflection.

This next image is one day old.   This is a tired somewhat ragged looking Pat Gelsinger proudly pointing at a 3 layer thick combined 10nm & 14nm super fin processor sample, one built using Alder Lake technology that is sucking in all sorts of power to just barely beat AMD's current products that run twice as economically on much less power consumption.  

This is a picture of "Intel is now trying to spend AMD into the ground" in other words.  This combined lithography, 3 stacked layer monster is PHYSICALLY HUGE (over twice as big as AMD's M4 socket product and it is pushing old 10nm and 14nm technology strongly into places it has never been taken before.  

BUT it is working at a very uneconomical power level ....... and Intel can apparently afford to build a fair quantity of them at a partial loss right now.   It also requires a new motherboard with an equally gigantic socket and a equally capable supersized cooler to cool the beast down, as its net performance advantage is slim when cold and that advantage can quickly disappear due to the processors overheating.

Alder Lake is still winning on paper against AMD at the moment, but it is taking up a LOT of Intel price support $$$ to do so.



Pat is looking and acting sort of desperate somewhat right now because if he can't get his hands on a chunk of the $80,000,000,000 in Biden Build Back Better Bucks real soon his Intel house of price supported cards is going to start to fall down around his ears again ...........



If he does get his hands on the Biden money he can limp along pretty good until he needs his next hand out, as he has spent his own money like a true liberal democrat (i.e. spent CAPITAL EXPANSION money he does not really have) for most of this past year.

AMD and Intel are releasing new "rumors" about their next generations.

AMD talks a bit about some future thing that has a casual or real basis, and Intel will immediately pop off some "far future" plan that 1) is shortly overwritten by their later waves of released BS information  2) is never intended to be taken seriously as Intel does not know what they really plan to do that far out.

AMD is now talking about solid plans for 30 times more processing speed using Xylinx tech combined with AMD 64 bit x86 tech.   This presumes TSMC continuing on down the lithography chain, which is at 7nm drifting down to 5nm.   These are well documented "mainframe" style plans, plans that you must do after announcing them.

Last time AMD talked about this sort of stuff, it was for a 20x improvement level which AMD then hit and exceeded on their claims as TSMC 7nm matured.

AMD designs all their stuff for MAINFRAME processors first and foremost, then adapts the more capable chiplets for their consumer & gaming machines.   Mainframe users want lower power consumption (saves money on utilities and on data farm cooling) and ever increasing processing speed.   These mainframe priorities then get reflected through the rest of the AMD product families.

AMD chiplets are already twice as energy efficient as Intel tiles, with both players offering about the same current processor speeds (Intel just uses far more power and cooling $$$) to get there.

AMD offers far cheaper motherboards with standard A-4 sockets that continue to be able to be upgraded with just installing a new processor and upgrading the board BIOS.  

AMD will upgrade to an A-5 socket soon, which mean buying a new motherboard will then last for approximately 10 years before getting replaced with an A-6 socket motherboard.

Intel intentionally churns their entire world of stuff every year lately---- this means lots of new stuff is force sold to Intel fanboys whether needed by them or not.    Intel motherboards are now costing twice as much as AMD motherboards and that trend is getting more and more noticeable as YOU CAN"T JUST GO OUT AND BUY THE LATEST STATE OF THE BRAG INTEL MOTHERBOARDS RIGHT NOW (various chip shortages, you know).


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MindShare, Amazon and other major processor sales centers that supply users that build their own systems continue to see AMD latest and greatest selling through in far larger numbers compared to Intel.   Intel is currently being hampered by lack of new motherboards to hold the new huge Alder Lake chipsets and MS itself lacks the Windows OS optimizations to properly support the new Alderlake processors.

Attitude in the Computer press seems to be that "in 4 weeks AMD comes out with their next generation of stuff, talk to us after that stuff gets rolled out and we will see the 2022 winners."

I think Toms Hardware has called it, in 4 weeks the stuff will be all neck and neck again.   Mainframe and workstation boys will prefer AMD as it is more stable, sockets last longer, it requires half the power and half the cooling system that Alder Lake would require and systems memory required is cheaper and easier to buy.

People buying pre-made boxes will only see the same old Intel stuff sitting out on the shelves until all existing stocks are all bought up .......   (Intel still has that strong of a legal contractual lock on the box builders).

China is stacking old style primitive large lithography stuff up on three layers deep stacked daughter boards (something they learned from watching Intel, I think).

All of the limited support documentation is in Chinese, and it is FAR FAR less than a current Raspberry Pi at this point in time, but it came on quickly, very quickly ......





The Sipeed Lichee RV is an inexpensive computer-on-a-module featuring a single core 64 bit Allwinner D1 RISC-V processor, 512MB of RAM, and a microSD card reader for storage. First announced in November, it’s a module that you could theoretically use as a standalone computer thanks to an onboard USB-OTG port, it’s missing a few features like a display output.

But now Sipeed is selling a tiny, affordable dock that gives the little computer HDMI and USB Type-A ports, among other things.

The Sipeed Lichee RV module sells for $17 and you can pick up a dock for $5 (or $8 if you want a model with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth support). You can also save a buck by purchasing a $21 bundle that includes a LicheeRV + dock.



Wow, a clone of the original single core Raspberry Pi power level with modern I/O and M-2 storage coming from China for $25 complete with finished I/O, substantial storage and Ubuntu support.    The Chinese do not lack the get-to-it-tive-ness needed to overcome obstacles and to compete.

Makes you wonder what Allwinner will be shipping internal to China later this year, and how many short years it will take for the Pi Brits to feel threatened by this very rapid RISC-V development and growth enough to actually go significantly upgrade their Brit stuff again ........

Intel had been pushing loud claims of 25+% improvements in their laptop performance suddenly jumps their claims to 40+% when faced with 30+% improvements in Ryzen 6000.

This is the same war of lies that Intel wages all the time.    Simply run your tests hotter and you too can beat AMD's best.   Trust your specialty house and their Freon cooler rig to keep it all together.

For how long does not play in any Intel testing as they never wait around for the inevitable BIOS throttling to take place.   Just quote all performance numbers off the big cores and take the energy usage off only the little cores ........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svRDkmmjvuM

"Stay tuned, more Intel excitement is ahead."    

Really?   I bet this latest BS wave gets sorted by the reputable computer press within 2-3 days from now ......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EogHCFd7w0

Linus Tech Tips says Win 11's big and little core scheduler and Intel big little processors constitute a compelling win right now and AMD needs to bring forward their next competitive (big little) processor generations immediately.

AMD can no longer intentionally stretch out its progress pipeline because Intel "requires no additional response from us" right now.   Intel requires a response alright, RIGHT NOW !!!

AMD certainly can't complacently follow its 2022 roadmap as is because the next two stair steps in that roadmap are already partially overcome by events.


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There is one other cause for "sticking to the schedule" delay, however ------ you must pre-schedule your TSMC production slots and pre-.pay for your production materials costs when you do the scheduling.    Sunk costs constitute a pretty good reason to follow the plan, but to also adjust that plan as much as can be done at this stage of things.

AMD has good relations with TSMC, so they may have some wiggle room here --- especially if TSMC is taking some image hits from Intel's unexpectedly good performance on this topic.

Once again, look to see TSMC treat Intel more like a competitor Fab trying to offload a capacity issue rather than a simple pay for a production lot customer.

Hey OF... there's your room heater right there.

https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-ceo-says-amd-is-in-the-rearview-mirror-and-neve...

Intel CEO says AMD is in the rearview mirror and 'never again will they be in the windshield'

Intel's CEO Pat Geslinger gives encouraging Christmas greetings to his Intel troops who are still suffering from being laid off and degraded with no raises for several years by his predecessors.  



In it, Pat gives out his gut feelings on the next few years that supposedly will contain 4 waves of Intel manufacturing upgrades (some rented from TSMC, some purchased outright from ASML).

Pat simply says that this is the low inflection point, the very lowest point in Intel's decline and from now on things should get better and better.   If Pat Geslinger's house of cards holds up, he is likely correct in this estimation.   Things are still somewhat shaky, especially with Joe Biden being too weak to move forward with his Build Back Better Plan but the deals and government bail outs still seem to be likely to happen eventually so I guess Pat is telling his troops the truth as he currently sees it.

Intel's Alder Lake gives Pat his first technical leadership position for at least part of 2022, but AMD will take that leadership back when they roll down to Ryzen 7000 later this year.   AMD requires no bail out bucks, which means that they will forge forward no matter what Biden can promise to give to Intel.

Intel is currently running on brown vapor fumes and using some really extreme hyperclocking to brand new VERY extreme levels right now.

Even so, Intel Alder Lake is actually up on top in the processor rankings right now .......  and if Geslinger gets his stream of Biden bucks he will likely trade places back and forth with AMD several times over the next few years.

Historically speaking, an ascendant Intel always keeps AMD around just to keep monopoly claims from bothering Intel too much .......  as Intel freewheels around acting just like a monopoly.


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An Eventful Week for Intel and others ......

Intel declares they are back on top again.  

Intel declares another 20 billion dollar new dual plant site in Ohio.  Joe Biden is quick to claim credit for this imaginary progress for his administration (these are the same people who cannot pass the funding for what Intel is hanging its neck out so badly to do).

NVIDIA declares they are a bigger American chipset supplier than Intel actually is and announces their plans to move CPU compute power over inside their big big graphics card sets.  Yes, NVIDIA already has the tech to do this tomorrow AM if they choose to release the drivers to do so.  NVIDIA already does this in mainframe world so the tech is not new to anybody.   See AMD move to do likewise if NVIDIA does indeed move to do this.

FTC follows through with their lawsuit to stop NVIDIA from taking over ARM Holdings (located in British UK).   This puts the UK, America and Belgium against the takeover with China saying they will not give approval at this time.

China is now doing the "will not give approval at this time" thing to the AMD and Xilinx merger now.   Being strictly an inside the USA affair, technically it is none of China's business, but Joe Biden will apparently continue to allow China to be the sole (and only) obstructionist in this AMD / Xilinx case.   Why ???  ...... because Joe Biden and his current administration is that weak and stupid.

AMD quietly rolls forward with existing plans (and quietly puts out some increased requirements for some much better coolers for their biggest chipsets).   AMD has TSMC both build and package all their new chipsets in their most modern plants in Taiwan, so do not be surprised when the new finished processors and cooling systems suddenly pop up in the world wide marketplace, quietly and without a lot of fuss.  

These new processors will be built with an improved cooling system in mind, as the ability to dump the heat made by the chipset actually makes up the "upper limits" that you can claim for that processor.   Both AMD and Intel are top end limited by their cooling systems, so look to see a cooling system war quickly develop as both sides see the importance of good cooling.



 
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https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-core-i9-12900k-vs-ryzen-9-5900x-5950x

Tom's ranks Intel as a "4 out of 5 categories" winner in this latest showdown comparison.  AMD needs to bring forward their most modern biggest 5nm "big little" gun to deliver a big win across the board.   Being unable to do so by the end of this year means Intel simply rules uncontested using their freakishly high current draws and all the various Intel hyperclocking tricks.  

The Intel hyper-clocking tricks will soon become the industry standard and AMD will be sidelined again as a stick in the mud "also ran".