Intel: 10nm slowly coming in 2019, 7nm with EUV is on track
Over at an investor conference, the Intel board and management have shared a thing or two about the 7nm production process. They also mentioned the problem some 10nm node, which now that I think about it, was planned for volume production in 2016, that's now 2019.
For 10nm, consumer processors will get priority and data centers procs will come later. How long Intel will stay at 10nm remains to be seen as 7nm is up and coming, bypassing the 10nm node in a really fast pace. Intel here mentions that 7 nm EUV is simultaneously being developed by another team and is currently on track;
"7 nm for us is a separate team and largely a separate effort. We are quite pleased with our progress on 7 nm. In fact, very pleased with our progress on 7 nm. I think that we have a lot of lessons out of the 10 nm experience as we defined a different optimization point between transistor density, power and performance and schedule predictability. [...] So, we are very, very focused on getting 7 nm out according to our original internal plans. "
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I thought Intel were supposed to be on a tick tock schedule where a new process was delivered every two years?
If 10nm was supposed to be delivered in 2016 that would mean 7nm should have been this year. Their claims it is in schedule sound a bit bogus to me, otherwise surely they'd have just skipped 10nm by now and written it off as a bad investment?
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I'd rather put all the efforts on 7nm, rather than trying to fix all the issues with 10nm. If it doesn't work out, ditch it.
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Intel's market situation is truly blessed. They have problems with an extremely important technology step for years, yet it doesn't shake their sales in the least. Instead they have trouble manufacturing as much stuff as customers would buy, and need to raise some prices to astronomical levels to cope with the demand.
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AMD is still on 14LP (rebranded to 12LP) as well. GloFo was planing its 100 MTr/mm²+ process to mass production this year. But it's not there either. Even more, they completely shut it down pushing AMD to postpone Zen 2 by a full year with switch to TSMC 7FF.
Intel is not having problems for years. They only tried to push density far beyond of current market skipping half node process. But eventually they are coming with mass production of 100 MTr/mm²+ density process like everyone (TSMC and Samsung) else - in 2019. TSMC 7SOC, used for Apple this year, has 96 MTr/mm² density.
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Intel "7 nm" density is close to Samsung "5 nm". Though that is just marketing and does not measure anything.