AMD and Intel have flipped their approaches a bit. AMD has been working on the X2 chip to smartly integrate two cores, and Intel came along with Pentium-D which was basically just two Pentium dies next to each other.
These days AMD has been playing that same tactic up in spades. Strix Point is a very very nice monolithic APU, but everywhere else they have an IO-Die and then a varying number of Core Complex Die. They're just dropping down variable numbers of cores.
Intel by compare is building interesting bespoke chiplet configurations, is taking on X2 like challenges. And I believe in the eventual gains here. They have parcelled up responsibilities in a really interesting way with Meteor Lake, a CPU, and GPU, a SoC (with its own e-cores as well!), and a io chiplet. Intel's got tons of value add from this. Gobs of usb4 that AMD is nowhere near delivering, a massive image/video processor, the ability to easily drop in new cores or new gpu's as they increment. The modular design is ambitious and interesting.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/20046/intel-unveils-meteor-la...
And Intel seems well ahead in the packaging game. Rather than big interposer dies, Intel's using smaller sized & much finer EIMB bridges between chips. Which helps them save power as well as reducing size. They have Foveros for much more heterogenous chip stacking than what most are pulling off.
Architecturally it feels like Intel's been very much refining & iterating across the multichip era for a long time, from the drastically underrated old Lakefield, to the very very highly integrated upcoming Lunar Lake. AMD is doing a great job making cores and gpu's, but Intel's been doing remarkably good, especially considering their 10nm+++ Intel 7 process, especially with the E-cores being a modest sized nicely performing core.
I also want to complement Intel on their really interesting architecture innovations. But I have severe doubts that their various on-chip accelerators are going to reach critical adoption levels where the developers that matter are excited about spending time optimizing for these awesome luxuries. Like Ponte Vecchio, very interesting tech, and something the hyperscalers and supercomputer can be excited about, but it's hard to see a path towards long term success.
I'd love to see Intel ship photonics-intergated solutions again. Their EIMB tech should complement that well, and that used to be a huge high value offering they had.
These days AMD has been playing that same tactic up in spades. Strix Point is a very very nice monolithic APU, but everywhere else they have an IO-Die and then a varying number of Core Complex Die. They're just dropping down variable numbers of cores.
Intel by compare is building interesting bespoke chiplet configurations, is taking on X2 like challenges. And I believe in the eventual gains here. They have parcelled up responsibilities in a really interesting way with Meteor Lake, a CPU, and GPU, a SoC (with its own e-cores as well!), and a io chiplet. Intel's got tons of value add from this. Gobs of usb4 that AMD is nowhere near delivering, a massive image/video processor, the ability to easily drop in new cores or new gpu's as they increment. The modular design is ambitious and interesting. https://www.anandtech.com/show/20046/intel-unveils-meteor-la...
And Intel seems well ahead in the packaging game. Rather than big interposer dies, Intel's using smaller sized & much finer EIMB bridges between chips. Which helps them save power as well as reducing size. They have Foveros for much more heterogenous chip stacking than what most are pulling off.
Architecturally it feels like Intel's been very much refining & iterating across the multichip era for a long time, from the drastically underrated old Lakefield, to the very very highly integrated upcoming Lunar Lake. AMD is doing a great job making cores and gpu's, but Intel's been doing remarkably good, especially considering their 10nm+++ Intel 7 process, especially with the E-cores being a modest sized nicely performing core.
I also want to complement Intel on their really interesting architecture innovations. But I have severe doubts that their various on-chip accelerators are going to reach critical adoption levels where the developers that matter are excited about spending time optimizing for these awesome luxuries. Like Ponte Vecchio, very interesting tech, and something the hyperscalers and supercomputer can be excited about, but it's hard to see a path towards long term success.
I'd love to see Intel ship photonics-intergated solutions again. Their EIMB tech should complement that well, and that used to be a huge high value offering they had.