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  • abufrejoval - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link

    Well there are far too many value issues and operational challenges to IoT, that somehow got ignored in all the hype: Just having the equivalent of a mainframe costing millions and munching megawatts on a chip costing pennies and munching milliwatts isn't enough.

    But I'm sure there will be plenty of stuff to profit from these low-power processes, especially since you don't need to produce your entire SoC 'aggregate' with a single process technology any more.

    If some company finds ways of producing 'chunky chocolate chips' at massive scale and low cost via robotics or something better, things are bound to happen.

    And where there is an actual demand, some engineers will find a solution.
  • FunBunny2 - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    "If some company finds ways of producing 'chunky chocolate chips' at massive scale and low cost via robotics or something better, things are bound to happen."

    yeah if that becomes the widespread paradigm, such a production mode is doomed. no people, no income, no demand, no sales. too many folks compare today's sloughing off of employment to the 'great migration' from farm to city in the early part of the 20th century. but that movement was possible because the skills needed to work in a structured manufacturing operation were even less than what was needed to farm successfully. today, those being made redundant have neither the basic education and skills to transition to the 'new information economy'. in the 60s, for those who weren't there, the computer revolution was manned (almost all men) by COBOL programmers with, at most, high school education trained by the US military, for free (well, not counting time in service).
  • MrCommunistGen - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link

    Does anyone know what (if any) design wins the previous 22ULL had? Mostly just trying to see what future products we might see N12e in. Yeah, IoT, but what?

    A lot of low cost devices just use off the shelf SoCs from yesteryear made on old, cheap processes because lowest possible BOM hugely outweighs performance or power efficiency in those designs.
  • brucethemoose - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link

    Yeah, I can see new nodes being an increasingly tough sell for IOT.
  • FunBunny2 - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    "off the shelf SoCs from yesteryear made on old, cheap processes because lowest possible BOM "

    depends. if the product does distributed database functions in order to facial recognition find progressive anarchists in real time, yeah, then you need more compute than a 4-function calculator. in any case IoT will, in the end, depend more on internet speed than compute on the devices. and mmWave 5G, the only kind that provides real bandwidth increase, is mostly going to be in cities (Blue havens of progressive anarchists), so the Stasi will need a lot of compute on their Dick Tracy Wrist TV.
  • Hardware Geek - Saturday, August 29, 2020 - link

    Even on Anandtech one can't escape the constant barrage of politics. It's pathetic, pointless, and completely irrelevant to the discussion.
  • Spunjji - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link

    Politics is everywhere whether you like it or not. Normally I'd agree about irrelevant applications of it, but FunBunny2's point was pretty relevant because as MrCommunistGen noted, there aren't many consumer use-cases for this process tech because they're primarily cost-focused, while there are plenty of potential state/police/military applications.

    I say this without really knowing whether or not I agree with FunBunny2's perspective, because it's extremely difficult to tell the intended context of the terms they're using.
  • Smell This - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link

    **Does anyone know what (if any) design wins the previous 22ULL had?**
    ___________________________________________________________

    Maybe a comparison with 22FDX GlobalFoundries "best in class performance, power consumption, integration capability ..."

    and GlobalFoundries 12FDX platform versus with TSMC N12e ??
  • name99 - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link

    "help enable the next generation of 5G-enabled IoT Edge devices"

    Just because Qualcomm spouts this BS about how IoT devices are automatically 5G-enabled devices doesn't mean Ars has to play along with their lies.
    How many IoT devices do you have in your house? I have maybe 50 by the time you include all the lights, plugs, sensors, cameras, ...
    And how many of them are even cell-enabled, let alone 5G enabled? I thought so...

    It makes sense for alarm/security controllers to be cellular enabled. Everything else, WHY? Costs more, uses more power; provides exactly what benefit over zigbee/bluetooth/wifi?
  • brucethemoose - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link

    It patronizes the poor, poor cell companies?

    Also, more data mining when wifi is unavailible?
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    Ars?
  • name99 - Saturday, August 29, 2020 - link

    Fair enough :-)
    When I get to ranting I'm an equal-opportunity critic!
  • Hrunga_Zmuda - Monday, September 7, 2020 - link

    Though I share your concerns, this is Anandtech, not Ars. ;-)

    The whole BS about 5G is pretty much meaningless at this point for the vast majority. I actually hope the next batch if iPhones don't go 5G because the current ones are not that much faster, and the mmwave is not proven yet to be actually useful.

    Lipstick on a pig should be Qualcomm's logo.
  • yeeeeman - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    My Intel atom z3735f made on 22nm finfet runs at 0.35v in idle and 0.45v at full load. And that is 2014. My, how good Intel was and how bad it has become because of some idiots running the company
  • drexnx - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    coming to post exactly this, .4v isn't some crazy low number since Baytrail was lower
  • dotjaz - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link

    It was not
  • Spunjji - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link

    Yeah, really not sure where these numbers are coming from.
  • dotjaz - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link

    Oh really, Intel seems to disagree. Full load voltage is above 1.1V

    https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en...
  • azfacea - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    we r finished. the dishwasher will be smarter than Einstein soon. skynet is coming.
  • Mobile-Dom - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    i feel like you added in FD-SOI to spoil my morning Ian
  • ads295 - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    Does this finally mean that smartwatches will last for a month? Maybe then I'll consider buying one.
  • FunBunny2 - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    I'll keep my Omega Speedmaster.
  • drexnx - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    if they had e-ink screens, maybe.

    it's not the SOC's fault.
  • michael2k - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link

    Well, 55% lower power means instead of consuming 100 units of energy in an hour, it only consumes 45 units of energy in an hour.

    So if Apple uses it for the Apple Watch, instead of lasting 2 days it might last 4 days.
  • qap - Saturday, August 29, 2020 - link

    No. It means that instead of using X + 100 units of energy it will consume X + 45 units of energy where X is consumption of all other components (display, gps, sensors, etc..). So for example if all other components use same energy as CPU today than it is 100+100 vs 100+45 and you will gain some 40% more runtime (instead of 2 days, 2.75 days)
  • Hrunga_Zmuda - Monday, September 7, 2020 - link

    This is good to hear, considering the rumors that Apple's new Apple Silicon Macs will have SOCs that are based on the 5nm process from TSMC. Too bad I won't need to replace mine before 2024. Or maybe I need to sell it soon while it's worth more? Not likely, don't want to be in on the first teething problems.

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