this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
164 points (100.0% liked)

news

24529 readers
661 users here now

Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:

We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.

Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:

The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.

  1. Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.

  2. Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.

  3. Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.

  4. Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.

  5. Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.

  6. Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.

  7. American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.

  8. Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.

  9. AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Huawei and SMIC quietly rolled out a new Kirin 9000C processor.

Chinese foundry SMIC may have broken the 5nm process barrier, as evidenced by a new Huawei laptop listed with an advanced chip with 5nm manufacturing tech — a feat previously thought impossible due to U.S sanctions.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] WayeeCool@hexbear.net 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

We probably still have at least two big performance leaps left before we have to either abandon silicon based transistors or the FET based logic gate. The next big thing Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and IBM are all working on is replacing the FinFET transistor we currently use for logic with Gate All Around Field Effect Transistors (GaaFET). Everyone will stay on gate all around for maybe 5 to 7 years and after we have squeezed out all possible performance optimizations, most roadmaps point to something like non-planar designs with multiple logic gates vertically stacked atop each other (CFET) being the next evolution. After that, maybe FET based logic gates on silicon will have finally hit their limit and a new material like germanium will be adopted... or we might just replace FETs all together with new forms of logic gates based on a novel mechanism.

but we're also nearly into the territory that the last mile of improvements require the entire computer (e.g. RAM/wifi/GPU/disk) must all be embedded into the final chip.

We already went there, all modern CPUs (Intel, AMD, ARM) are true SOCs (systems on a chip) where the components that used to be discreet (south bridge, north bridge, memory controller, clock generators, io/storage/network/usb controllers) are now integrated on the same silicon as the CPU cores themselves. The latest generation chips from both Intel and AMD are even leveraging 3D integration (vertically stacking modules on top of each other) to squeeze out that last bit of extra performance while maintaining the same physical footprint. It's at the point where they are 3D stacking up to a gigabyte of SRAM based L3 cache directly on top of CPU cores or putting up to 128GB of HBM ram directly on the CPU package to act as an L4 cache.

Some people assume only CPUs built for mobile devices (phones, laptops) are full SOCs but desktop/server CPUs that get socketed into a motherboard at this point are also true SOCs. Modern desktop and server motherboards tend to be nothing more than power delivery components and a physical jig that makes it easy to plug peripherals into the CPU SOC or connect multiple CPU SOCs together on one board. Other than increasing the bandwidth of interconnects, there is still very real performance that can be gained by lowering the latency between CPUs and plug in peripherals like memory DIMMs, discrete GPUs, network adapters, or other CPUs via replacing electrical traces with photonics. Intel's lab division has been working on maturing silicon photonics to the point it can be directly integrated into a CPU.