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http://www.righto.com/2020/06/die-shrink-how-intel-scaled-down-8086.html
The revolutionary Intel 8086 microprocessor was introduced 42 years ago this month so I've been studying its die.1 I came across two 8086 dies with different sizes, which reveal details of how a die shrink works. The concept of a die shrink is that as technology improved, a manufacturer could shrink the silicon die, reducing costs and improving performance. But there's more to it than simply scaling down the whole die. Although the internal circuitry can be directly scaled down,2 external-facing features can't shrink as easily. For instance, the bonding pads need a minimum size so wires can be attached, and the power-distribution traces must be large enough for the current. The result is that Intel scaled the interior of the 8086 without change, but the circuitry and pads around the edge of the chip were redesigned.
The photo below shows an 8086 chip from 1979, and a version with a visibly smaller die from 1986.3 (The ceramic lids have been removed to show the silicon dies inside.) In the updated 8086, the internal circuitry was scaled to about 64% of the original size by length, so it took 40% of the original area. The die as a whole wasn't reduced as much; it was about 54% of the original area. (The chip's package was unchanged, the 40-pin DIP package commonly used for microprocessors of that era.)
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by linkdude64 on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:19PM (9 children)
I almost can't believe how petty and stupid Intel is, to actually be paying journalists under the table to write stories about their die-shrinking accomplishments 40 years ago or whatever because they are gagging on how much shit they're chugging through the hose AMD shoved into their throats. Did you all see how they're releasing their benchmarks during tradeshow presentations comparing their latest to older AMD CPUs in different classes? I am looking forward to Intel's successes in the future, but I am at peak schaudenfraude with them, and their repeated failures wash over me like multiple orgasms that mirror the impotent rage experienced again and again on the journey we've gone on with them over the years over their illegal and immoral business practices. Fuck you Intel, by AMD, over and over.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:47PM (2 children)
http://www.righto.com/p/about-ken-shirriff.html [righto.com]
How dare he write an article about old Intel chips!
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(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday June 29 2020, @10:52PM (1 child)
Please enlighten me on the work history of the authors behind the last several articles you read online. Are you intimately familiar with them? I have no idea who Ken Sheriff is, and even if I did, his name wasn't in TFS, AFAIK.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 29 2020, @11:32PM
Weak. Maybe you shouldn't say stuff like:
Unless you have something other than your feelz to back it up.
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:56PM (1 child)
How is showing Intel die shrinks were often no more than basic scaling could possibly be confused with Intel sponsored marketing? Combined with AMD's recent success with foreign fabs, this piece strengthen the claim Intel's lead lose is relates to heavy industry fabrication methods and isn't recoverable short of a lucky basic research breakthrough.
If I owned Intel stocks and saw something like this with recent chips, I'd shit pants.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @02:05PM
AMD has made some disastrously stupid moves, like overpaying for ATI, but selling off their fabs and contracting to companies that are more specialized in fabrication has been working out very well for them so far. We'll see if that remains the case. But, at least they're not Intel. Intel jumped the shark about 20 years ago and the only reason they've been able to hold their position is that they regularly engaged in antitrust violations and were able to benefit from administrations that didn't believe that antitrust violations were a big deal.
(Score: 4, Informative) by caseih on Monday June 29 2020, @12:24AM (3 children)
Seriously? If you know anything about Ken sherriff you'll know he's a brilliant engineer who loves reverse engineering old things like space clocks and the history of it all.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday June 29 2020, @10:51PM (2 children)
I know absolutely nothing about Ken Sheriff. Please do not act as if I should, either - if I asked you what the work histories of the authors of the last several articles you read online were, I'd think you were a statistical anomaly if you were intimately familiar with a majority of them.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday June 29 2020, @11:34PM
The burden of proof was on you, not anybody else.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @10:36PM
Another hint: Save your foul-mouthed comments for when they don't make you look uneducated and/or immature.
Ken has been doing this stuff for years upon years, including youtube videos and web pages documenting the delidding and inspection of many classic electronic circuits, including reverse engineering them for efforts to create reproductions. Lots of interesting stuff whether Intel, AMD, Mostek, you name it. He's about as non-partisan as you can get technologically.
As to Intel's incompetence, who needs to state it anymore? The plebs will buy what the plebs buy and the rest of us will do our diligence and pick what best suits our needs. Companies like Intel and EA and Ubisoft make great villains, but they ignore the Elephant in the room: The real villains are society itself, without whom those small time villains would not have the political, social, or economic positioning to do what they do. We could have nipped the Intel problem in the bud 25 years ago, but instead we ended up with duopolies in both processor and graphics processor technologies, and a operating system monoculture that has only started to seriously erode in the past decade. And yet all of these things are changing for the worse, not better, as more and more technology even from upstarts is being locked down to keep consumers from owning what they buy, whether software or hardware.