Intel Ethernet Controller Lithography 7nm (which foundry node)
Posted by Primary_Olive_5444@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 24 comments
Does anyone know which foundry 7nm class node is Intel Networking products made from?
Internally within Intel Foundry, Intel 4 (Meteor Lake) is similar to a 7nm class products.
Or is this more likely from TSMC N7 class product segment.
| Product Collection | Intel® Ethernet E830 Controllers (up to 200GbE) |
|---|---|
| Code Name | Products formerly Connorsville |
| Marketing Status | Launched |
| Launch Date | 2/24/2025 |
| Lithography | 7 nm |
| Product Collection | Intel® Ethernet Controller E610 |
|---|---|
| Marketing Status | Launched |
| Launch Date | Q4'25 |
| Lithography | 7 nm |
Slasher1738@reddit
Probably Intel 7 aka 10++++
Primary_Olive_5444@reddit (OP)
That's what i'm trying to figure out. Whether Intel Foundry are making switch chips themselves (i.e. inhouse)
So Intel 7 (is what the node name used by Intel Foundry)
Intel 7 first product was Intel 12th Gen (Alder Lake) then 13rd and 14th Gen Raptor Lake. Advanced logic products.
But during hotchips 2025 they introduced Intel Xeon 6+ for Clearwater Forest.
In that presentation, there was a slide showing Intel 7 is been used for the I/O tile.
I/O tile scaling is because of the circuit designs for transceiver, SerDes and DSP stuff (basically analog). So a less-leading edge node is more feasible for switch chips (which handles alot of analog to digital conversion)
eentrottel@reddit
with a chiplet design, there are quite a lot of 25 or 50Gb/s lanes going between compute and IO dies. On the physical layer its the same as ETH :) So they definitely have 50GB/s transceivers for all of their own recent nodes, probably going back to intel 10.
Their networking cards are definitely made from Intel 7, why would they pay extra for tsmc when they have capacity and the cost is lower
Primary_Olive_5444@reddit (OP)
That's what i'm trying to ascertain.
As shown on Intel product website, it merely states Lithography 7nm (which is vague)
But which foundry 7nm node?
If indeed Intel Foundry own 7nm node, then just be explicit on the product page.
eentrottel@reddit
its quite recent development that intel makes anything on tsmc, so maybe the spec people haven't gotten the message that this is unclear
Scary-Jaguar-9072@reddit
Seems unlikely given the high demand and cost associated with Intel 7.
Slasher1738@reddit
The demand is not that high, especially at this point for it to be at Intel 7.
Scary-Jaguar-9072@reddit
You're wrong, demand for Intel 7 is much higher than supply creating a big bottleneck at Intel and costing them Billions.
Slasher1738@reddit
lol, whatever dude. Go find evidence that says otherwise.
Scary-Jaguar-9072@reddit
There's literally 100 articles on this subject. Its mentioned on every investor call and earnings report for the last year. Its the biggest story concerning Intel. You CLEARLY do not follow the industry if this is your first time hearing about it. Theres bern a dozen articles posted on this sub on the subject in just the last couple months.
Here's just 1 example. It's not my job to find you 100 more but Google certainly can.
https://www.techpowerup.com/342213/capacity-constraints-hit-intel-as-demand-outstrips-intel-10-7-node-supply
Slasher1738@reddit
And clearly you have no idea that fab can make multiple products at the same facility. Just because supply is tight doesn't mean they're not doing any Networking chips.
Their demand for CPU's is obviously higher than for the Networking Chips. Intel is a smaller fish in the networking space these days than they were before. Same is said for TSMC with their massive demand.
Go touch some F-ing grass
Scary-Jaguar-9072@reddit
Intel not going to want to use ot producing low margin networking chips instead of $10,000 DCAI chips. They are stopping producing even consumer 7nm processors.
Slasher1738@reddit
Per the link YOU cited, they were still producing Raptor Lake
Fr0HiKE@reddit
bruh just take the L im second handedly embarrassed for you lol
Scary-Jaguar-9072@reddit
You're just mind-numbingly ignorant. Not wasting any more of my time.
jeffroxs101@reddit
They have so many orders, and so little fab capacity they are losing billions ..... Are all these orders in the room with us right now? Past I checked Intel was the LAST fabricator companies go to to produce chips, who exactly is costing them billions by refusing to use a sub-par node?
Scary-Jaguar-9072@reddit
Its embarrassing how little people on a sub titled "hardware" know about actual hardware. Intel 7 is used on DCAI chips which are seeing a surging demand due to AI. Both Intel 3 and Intel 7 are capacity constrained.
Slasher1738@reddit
Damn sure ain't Gaudi. Battlemage is made at TSMC
EnglishBrekkie_1604@reddit
It’s used for the tiles on Xeon products. For example Clearwater Forest uses 18A for CPU tiles, Intel 3 for LLC tiles, and Intel 7 for its base tile. Intel cut a lot of Intel 7 capacity to save money, now suddenly the demand for server CPUs has exploded, and whilst Intel 3 and especially 18A have a lot of capacity to spare, Intel 7 just doesn’t.
Awkward-Candle-4977@reddit
If it's Intel foundry, that's Intel (fake) 4.
Primary_Olive_5444@reddit (OP)
Most nodes naming have gone out-of-whack with actual manufacturing and nanometer dimension.
These days just focus on SRAM scaling (MB).
L3 cache size, L2 private cache on the monolithic die/tile.
6MB L2 is always going to be better than 4MB private L2.
EnglishBrekkie_1604@reddit
SRAM scaling is an awful point of comparison because in that regard TSMC 6nm and 2nm are almost the same. Essentially the crux of modern hardware design is figuring out how to improve something when transistors keep getting smaller and faster yet SRAM is stagnant.
Primary_Olive_5444@reddit (OP)
N3P -> Apple M5 increased.
For a new macbook air, i would skip M2-M4 and just get M5.
Maybe it's a bad comparison, but it's the simplest to look up.
just lscpu --all --caches --bytes (1 linux command)
Out-of-order engine (execution ports, distributed scheduler entries size, register file size) would require more digging time to get the results.
Exist50@reddit
Likely TSMC or even Samsung.