Intel Might Drop 10nm node for Desktop processors

Yesterday evening the news reached the web that Intel could be skipping their troublesome 10nm node altogether, for desktop processors. And that would mean the next-gen Ice Lake processors.

Website HardwareLuxx.de reports that Intel will not manufacture any 10nm processors for desktops, focusing on 7nm chips for the specific segment, set for launch in two years. This means that Intel will confine its 10 nm microarchitectures, "Ice Lake" and "Tiger Lake" to only the mobile platform, while the desktop platform will see derivatives of the 14nm "Skylake" until 2022. Essentially, the report claims that Intel will not launch the "Tiger Lake" and "Alder Lake" chips based on a 10nm process, at least at their previously scheduled time frames. Intel has been challenged to migrate from the 14nm to the more advanced 10nm manufacturing process, at least for desktop chips, which have high clock rates. The company has announced the 10nm Ice Lake processors for mobile devices.

Meanwhile, intel was very quick to out some words on this to Toms hardware: desktop processors based on the 10 nm silicon fabrication node are still on the company's roadmap.

"We continue to make great progress on 10 nm, and our current roadmap of 10 nm products includes desktop," the company said in its communication.

* Table courtesy hardwareluxx

Intel is expected to release the 14nm Comet Lake S processors this year, which will offer up to 10 cores. Back in May, the company shared info to release Tiger Lake chips in 2020. These will be mobile chips featuring Intel's new Xe graphics engine.