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Is Intel working on an answer to AMD's infinity fabric/chiplet design?

bru

bru

Soldato
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Does anyone know if Intel are working on their own version of the infinity fabric/chiplet idea?

Google isn't being particularly helpful in that regard, so has anyone heard anything?

I'm sure that Intel will have people working on something, but I cannot find any useful info.
 
Man of Honour
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They did all the R&D on it years ago, while they are iteratively moving towards more modular designs I don't think there is anything planned on consumer lines before 7nm that uses a chiplet approach - though looks like some stuff might show up in the high end compute market a little sooner.

I can't see them being in a huge rush anyhow as in servers, etc. their multi-socket systems hold up pretty well and as they do their own fabrication don't have quite the same economic pressures.
 
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Intel spend a lot on R&D and this article gives an overview of some upcoming stuff:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14211/intels-interconnected-future-chipslets-emib-foveros

They are focusing a lot on AI and promoting the breadth of their portfolio which is larger than that of AMD and Nvidia combined.
They have a lot of stuff so it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
Most of the interesting stuff is for the data centre but some will filter down to the desktop.

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/pc-hardware/48670-raja-koduri-announces-oneapi-launch-in-q4-19

A move to persistent memory via future versions of Optane and other types of SSDs might well be more significant than the diminishing returns of MOAR cores for desktop usage.
 

Deleted member 66701

D

Deleted member 66701

Does anyone know if Intel are working on their own version of the infinity fabric/chiplet idea?

Google isn't being particularly helpful in that regard, so has anyone heard anything?

I'm sure that Intel will have people working on something, but I cannot find any useful info.

Infinity Fabric was AMD's 'answer' to Intel's existing mesh architecture to achieve performance parity, so it's not a case of Intel having to respond - they got there first.
 
Soldato
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Infinity Fabric was AMD's 'answer' to Intel's existing mesh architecture to achieve performance parity, so it's not a case of Intel having to respond - they got there first.
Intel's mesh was designed for Xeon Phi though, which is a completely different kettle of fish. Its transition to the regular CPU space with Skylake-X was an unmitigated disaster, ballooning power and heat output whilst regressing performance in many workloads (including gaming). Intel most certainly do need to respond, given what a joke of a platform X299 was and is.
 
Man of Honour
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AMD had been generally working their way towards Infinity Fabric for awhile with the various consortiums, etc. (HSA and so on) that intention wasn't for a purely CPU mesh though.
 
Caporegime
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Infinity Fabric was AMD's 'answer' to Intel's existing mesh architecture to achieve performance parity, so it's not a case of Intel having to respond - they got there first.

This isn't remotely close to true. That Intel Mesh is a single on die cpu protocol, infinity fabric is a coherent go anywhere interconnect. It's design is monumentally different to that mesh. It's both clock and power adaptive and designed to connect literally any part of a system and any two chips together. It can be routed over pci-e, throughout a single chip, connect multiple chips on one package, connect two sockets together, etc.

Intel's mesh isn't designed for literally any of that except connection local cores together on one die. When one core needs to speak to another core on another die it uses a completely different interconnect to reach it. Their dual die chip that is supposed to be available this year, doesn't use the mesh to talk across dies on the same package either. There are a million different interconnects that both companies have. The range, scope and designed use is really what you would use to compare interconnects, the mesh Intel use on a single die is entirely incomparable to infinity fabric which is primarily used as an off die interconnect.
 
Soldato
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In reply to the OP, yes Intel are working on things, Compute Express Link could be seen as an equivalent to IF, and Foveros could be seen as their answer to chiplets (Anandtech link to article about Foveros)
 
Soldato
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Does anyone know if Intel are working on their own version of the infinity fabric/chiplet idea?

Google isn't being particularly helpful in that regard, so has anyone heard anything?

I'm sure that Intel will have people working on something, but I cannot find any useful info.

There is nothing for the next few years. Considering that Intel 7nm would come in 2021-22 to maybe see something like that.
 
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This isn't remotely close to true. That Intel Mesh is a single on die cpu protocol, infinity fabric is a coherent go anywhere interconnect. It's design is monumentally different to that mesh. It's both clock and power adaptive and designed to connect literally any part of a system and any two chips together. It can be routed over pci-e, throughout a single chip, connect multiple chips on one package, connect two sockets together, etc.

Intel's mesh isn't designed for literally any of that except connection local cores together on one die. When one core needs to speak to another core on another die it uses a completely different interconnect to reach it. Their dual die chip that is supposed to be available this year, doesn't use the mesh to talk across dies on the same package either. There are a million different interconnects that both companies have. The range, scope and designed use is really what you would use to compare interconnects, the mesh Intel use on a single die is entirely incomparable to infinity fabric which is primarily used as an off die interconnect.

well said drunkenmaster!

intel are easily a generation or two behind AMD and AMD isn't exactly going to be sitting around either. In one of their own videos I saw LAST YEAR, they openly admitted they were working on Zen 5. Yes 5!
 
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