Extreme process node advantage? They are just one generation ahead at most (2 years). It's not nearly enough to overcome the architecture's inefficiency when it comes to doing GPU stuff, nor is it big enough to overcome the architecture inefficiency for power consumption vs ARM chips for that matter.
By published data, Intel 45nm, with products out in 2007, switches as fast as TSMC 28nm, with products out January this year.
They only have ~2 years of advantage on density, but they reliably have 5+ years advantage on speed. I'd call that extreme.
I absolutely believe that once Intel actually releases atom cpus on their best process (so far, they have mostly used them to fill out production on old processes), it will beat ARM on performance/watt. When they move atom to a competitive uarch (OoO ffs), the race will stop being a race.
That's indeed what I was referring to. Intel's processes are typically superior to AMD/GloFo's at the same node, and miles beyond the respective bulk processes at TSMC. They also get there first.
Is it really 30% of your silicon even discounting caches? I'd love to see some analysis (and comparison against arm) of this from an expert; I've heard everything varying from "x86 instruction decoding is majority of the power drain" to "ISA doesn't matter, it's everything behind the frontend that matters" and it's hard to find actual analysis. I guess partly because this is all highly confidential.
And I know even ARM has instructions that make chip designers want to get all stabbity (ldm, stm)
