Intel Revives old 22nm process to battle 14nm shortages

Not surprising. And no one will read the 22nm fine print (with 14nm line spacing) on the product brochure.
 
Intel Bob.png


I'm really starting to wonder WTF is going on over at Intel.
 
Why is it a bad thing if they want to pump out some budget parts on an older process?
 
GotNoRice said:
Why is it a bad thing if they want to pump out some budget parts on an older process?
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It does not make any sense to market it... If we guess that it is a re released G3420, it is slower than a $50 Ryzen 3000G, and still almost 50% slower than a Ryzen 1200 which can be had for $60,Why should Intel release that. They could put a $50 price tag on it, and it's still too much
 
GotNoRice said:
Why is it a bad thing if they want to pump out some budget parts on an older process?
Click to expand...

matt167 said:
It does not make any sense to market it... If we guess that it is a re released G3420, it is slower than a $50 Ryzen 3000G, and still almost 50% slower than a Ryzen 1200 which can be had for $60,Why should Intel release that. They could put a $50 price tag on it, and it's still too much
Click to expand...

You say that till you see Dell selling 22nm Pentiums for almost nothing cause Intel gave them to them for a penny as a good customer reward... and to say oopsie for not being able to sell you anything worth selling.

Dell and the other OEMS are always suckers for the ya it sucks but its pure profit deals.
 
GotNoRice said:
Why is it a bad thing if they want to pump out some budget parts on an older process?
Click to expand...

This processor is a nice enough processor, I've got a slightly nicer one (3470) in a light duty home server around here, but the G3420 was originally released six years ago, in 2013, and was significantly better than Core2, which intel had put out six years before that, in 2007. It's a pretty big stumble that they've got to restart this line; Zen 2 competes well with today's Intel processors, it must run rings around 2013's Intel processors.
 
ChadD said:
You say that till you see Dell selling 22nm Pentiums for almost nothing cause Intel gave them to them for a penny as a good customer reward... and to say oopsie for not being able to sell you anything worth selling.

Dell and the other OEMS are always suckers for the ya it sucks but its pure profit deals.
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right, but OEM specific parts are not really marketed. Make them available at a cheap enough price to the OEM and, they find their way into computers. AMD used to do it with junk processors. I had an Athlon X3 445 Rana that wouldn't unlock because the 4th core was too far unstable unless I underclocked it quite a bit. But it was a retail part. And My brother had a Athlon X2 250U ( garbage OEM only sku ). Dual core 1.6 ghz... Put into my overclockable mobo to see what it could do, and it would not break 2 ghz and it was on the same process as processors that ran 3 ghz out of the box
 
GotNoRice said:
Why is it a bad thing if they want to pump out some budget parts on an older process?
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To a certain extent that is fine for a low performing part. They can't use it mobile parts though, I'd suspect, because people expect longer battery life these days.

I wonder how large the market is for low end desktop and all in one Celeron parts.

I had a few Haswell G1840's in my Linux LibreElec Kodi HTPC's for a while. They were decent CPU's for the purpose.

Since then I've upgraded my main HTPC to Coffee Lake as I wanted HEVC support, and stuck faster CPU's in the other two just because I happened upon them cheaply over the years. Still have the G1840's in the basement. I should donate them to someone who will put them to use...

It's more of an embarrassment for Intel than anything else to have to move backwards.
 
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DeathFromBelow said:
View attachment 205169

I'm really starting to wonder WTF is going on over at Intel.
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It's actually pretty simple. It takes years to get entirely new chips designed and it takes a serious time investment for the manufacturing processes. Intel was resting on their laurels and got caught being lazy. It's that they were so lazy by the time ryzen launched, they were years behind. No matter how much money they attempt to throw at it, it won't help the time required to get something new out the door. So all we get for now is iterations like they've been doing.

I wouldn't expect anything new and exciting out if Intel till 2022 at this point.
 
It's just a terrible move for the consumer. Old chip, old chipset, ddr3 memory... The only people buying these are the ones not smart enough to do any research before buying.
 
matt167 said:
right, but OEM specific parts are not really marketed. Make them available at a cheap enough price to the OEM and, they find their way into computers. AMD used to do it with junk processors. I had an Athlon X3 445 Rana that wouldn't unlock because the 4th core was too far unstable unless I underclocked it quite a bit. But it was a retail part. And My brother had a Athlon X2 250U ( garbage OEM only sku ). Dual core 1.6 ghz... Put into my overclockable mobo to see what it could do, and it would not break 2 ghz and it was on the same process as processors that ran 3 ghz out of the box
Click to expand...

Another story... AMD didn't restart that line 5 years later cause they couldn't deliver enough Zen parts. AMD had crap for years we all know this... and everyone sells their just a sliver better then fab fail parts to OEMS for cheap.

This Intel move has a few advantages for Intel
- Aiming them at OEMS as big cheap high margin carrot. Intel is going to give these away to OEMs like Dell when they order 10,000 of the real chips. Order up a couple new models worth mid range laptop parts (instead of AMD R5s) and we will throw in 1,000 brand new old Pentiums you can sell into dumb terminals at 100% margin.
- Or to sell into markets overseas that Intel has decided don't need the low end fab fails. Instead of selling say India OEMs the lowest end 14nm you sell them these old 22nm at an attractive discount. Then the keep all the low end 14nm fab fails to sell to Dell... again offering them numbers and pricing to try and stave off R3 / R5 mobile gains.

If either of those scenarios is what Intel is shooting for... well its low and it may just work. It looks like the big OEMs are turning to AMD more. Still if Intel can swing enough semi legal backroom deals we all know they may just be able to keep AMD from making major headway before they can answer. I know 2-3 years away seems like a long time away... but all it really is in OEM speak is a couple product cycles. Free product even low end junk goes a long way in a business where a mid range laptop may only have a low single digit profit margin for even the major OEMS. Offering them basically free sales for other markets, or deep discounts that boost their margins even a couple points are very effective.
 
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matt167 said:
It does not make any sense to market it... If we guess that it is a re released G3420, it is slower than a $50 Ryzen 3000G, and still almost 50% slower than a Ryzen 1200 which can be had for $60,Why should Intel release that. They could put a $50 price tag on it, and it's still too much
Click to expand...


People will still buy it because Intel, just like the bought garbage because "Pentium." These chips are to OEM's what swag is to trade-show consumers. Free shit to keep them in the door, moderately placated with what essentially amounts to a 5c pen, or 10c keychain.

If it costs them little to do, and keeps OEMs happy - who can make a killing off your average consumer who cares more about how their airpods look than sound (see my "because, Intel" argument above)... Well, it makes perfect sense for Intel to spin up a 22nm process.

I still have a 2500k in service that runs just fine, does whatever I need it to at 1080p, and she's going to her forever home very soon, likely to stay in service for another 3 years or so.
 
toast0 said:
This processor is a nice enough processor, I've got a slightly nicer one (3470) in a light duty home server around here, but the G3420 was originally released six years ago, in 2013, and was significantly better than Core2, which intel had put out six years before that, in 2007. It's a pretty big stumble that they've got to restart this line; Zen 2 competes well with today's Intel processors, it must run rings around 2013's Intel processors.
Click to expand...

Hmm, interesting. I always forget how long ago I have purchased hardware. I have a g3258 overclocked to the moon here and it's single core performance is nearly on par with my 4690k at similar clock speeds.
 
kirbyrj said:
It's just a terrible move for the consumer. Old chip, old chipset, ddr3 memory... The only people buying these are the ones not smart enough to do any research before buying.
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I would imagine if this is a re-spin, it will be at least modernized to accept current chipsets with a DDR4 memory controller... hopefully! :eek:
Has any tech company moved backwards like this before?

I remember back in the mid-1990s when 80386 CPUs were still being sold in order for Intel to liquidate old stock, even coming paired with Windows 95, but still, this is just bizarre.
 
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Red Falcon said:
I would imagine if this is a re-spin, it will be at least modernized to accept current chipsets with a DDR4 memory controller... hopefully! :eek:
Has any tech company moved backwards like this before?

I remember back in the mid-1990s when 80386 CPUs were still being sold in order for Intel to liquidate old stock, even coming paired with Windows 95, but still, this is just bizarre.
Click to expand...

It didn't sound like it was a respin...sounded like it was just firing up the old production line. Maybe I'm wrong though.
 
Can't they at least make something still reasonably decent, like say an i3-4170 or even an i5-4690, and rebrand it as Pentium Gold?

Don't they know that those bottom-of-the-barrel CPUs will be competing with the Ryzen 3000G?
 
I've heard a rumor that Intel's thinking is, "If we can't be faster or use less power or be cheaper, we'll be bigger!", and it's backed up by this pic. The thinking is that even a Chimpanzee with downs syndrome can make one of these so there's no need for advanced fabs.
NextBIGThing.jpg
 
1_rick said:
Essentially they're unkilling a Haswell Pentium (the G3420) (which is the equivalent of a Celeron today) for entry-level machines, for those who don't want to wade through machine-translated English.
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So where are they expecting OEMs to get the DDR3 and H81 chipset motherboards?

Are you sure they're not just porting Skylake to 22nm to build a crappy 54w dual-core? That's a big ask to bundle in a chipset/mobo with every Haswell CPU, and that's assuming they can source enough DDR3 to make use of these.

They could probably hit up to the Pentium 5400 without too much trouble. This is the same chip config/TDP, but with full GPU and AVX2

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...core-i3-4360-processor-4m-cache-3-70-ghz.html
 
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defaultluser said:
So where are they expecting OEMs to get the DDR3 and H81 chipset motherboards?

Are you sure they're not just porting Skylake to 22nm to build a crappy 54w dual-core? That's a big ask to bundle in a chipset/mobo with every Haswell CPU, and that's assuming they can source enough DDR3 to make use of these.

They could probably hit up to the Pentium 5400 without too much trouble. This is the same chip config/TDP, but with full GPU and AVX2

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...core-i3-4360-processor-4m-cache-3-70-ghz.html
Click to expand...

It sounded like from the product description that it was un-EOLing an old product.
 
kirbyrj said:
It sounded like from the product description that it was un-EOLing an old product.
Click to expand...


So, does this mean Intel will just magic-up some discontinued motherboards as well?

It's a much harder thing thann you think to ship worthless Haswell processors to OEMs. You will have to supply an H81 motherboard with each chip you give away.

Why would Intel complicate life for them when they can just backport Skylake? Then they can consolidate the same chipset they're already outsorcing to Samsung with the CPUs they're outsouring to 22nm.

This may just be a case of Intel sitting on some unused Haswell stock,and shipping CPUs plus mobos to do whatever they can to meet demand. But if they are restarting dual-core CPU production on 22nm, it would be stupid to use Haswell.
 
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defaultluser said:
So, does this mean Intel will just magic-up some discontinued motherboards as well?

It's a much harder thing thann you think to ship worthless Haswell processors to OEMs. You will have to supply an H81 motherboard with each chip you give away.

Why would Intel complicate life for them when they can just backport Skylake? Then they can consolidate the same chipset they're already outsorcing to Samsung with the CPUs they're outsouring to 22nm.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying it makes business sense. It just sounds like that's what they were doing from the article. I have no idea if it is feasible to backport Skylake to 22 nanometer.
 
kirbyrj said:
I'm not saying it makes business sense. It just sounds like that's what they were doing from the article. I have no idea if it is feasible to backport Skylake to 22 nanometer.
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Yeah, it might be they are doing this at a loss, just to get their customers to stop screaming, or at least scream slightly less until they can get 7nm out.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Yeah, it might be they are doing this at a loss, just to get their customers to stop screaming, or at least scream slightly less until they can get 7nm out.
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Yeah, I was surprised how many new H81 motherboards you can still find NEW on Amazon for $150 or less. Even though Intel has discontinued the processors, they may not have discontinued the chipsets.

This is feasible, but will still be difficult for OEMs to order motherboards in-quantity. Intel will have to give away the CPUs for free if they expect them to deal with these other procurement difficulties.
 
defaultluser said:
Yeah, I was surprised how many new H81 motherboards you can stll find NEW on Amazon. Even though Intel has discontinued the processors, they may not have discontinued the chipsets.

This is feasible, but will still be difficult for OEMs to order motherboards in-quantity.
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OEM's usually don't order motherboards from third parties do they? They tend to have custom, in-house designs with non-standard form factors that fit into their custom SFF or AIO boxes.

Provided too many of the parts on those boards haven't become obsolete since the last build, ordering a build from their board house should be a phone call and a PO away.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
OEM's usually don't order motherboards from third parties do they? They tend to have custom, in-house designs with non-standard form factors that fit into their custom SFF or AIO boxes.

Provided too many of the parts on those boards haven't become obsolete since the last build, ordering a build from their board house should be a phone call and a PO away.
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You're assuming their preferred motherboard maker/preferred models isn't discontinued. Let's hope they can work around the reduced selection!
 
Apparently they only discontinued the chip a week ago, according to TechSpot. So this isn't a case of pulling something or of mothballs.
 
defaultluser said:
You're assuming their preferred motherboard maker/preferred models isn't discontinued. Let's hope they can work around the reduced selection!
Click to expand...

Again, they usually design their own boards, and have their board houses build it to their own specifications. Think of Dell and HP for instance. They aren't buying boards from the likes of Asus/Gigabyte/MSI/Asrock/etc. They ahve their own electrical engineers design their own boards to their own specifications and then have their board manufacturing vendors make them for them. The normal laws of motherboard supply as they exist in the hobby builders market don't apply to them. They just make their own every time.

The only thing that I would see being a concern is if there is a lot of parts obsolescence, which is a constant problem in board manufacturing. On the flip side it is so common a problem in the board manufacturing industry that constant re-spinning of the board to replace existing obsolete parts with new ones is something anyone who designs and manufactures boards does ALL THE TIME, so this shouldn't be a huge impediment, as long as all the core parts (like Intel chipsets) can be sourced, and I'm sure Intel will make sure of that.
 
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