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.
Node | CPU Architecture | GPU μrch | Launch | |
Coffee Lake-S | 14 nm | Skylake | Gen9.5 | 2018 |
Skylake-X | 14 nm | Skylake | - | 2018 |
Cascade Lake-X | 14 nm | Skylake | - | 2019 |
Comet Lake-S | 14 nm | Skylake | Gen9.5 | 2019/20 |
Rocket Lake-S | 14 nm | Skylake | Gen12 | 2021 |
- | - | |||
Meteor Lake | 7 nm | - | - | 2022 |
* 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.
Intel Might Drop Desktop processor Prices by 15% To Fight off AMD Ryzen 3000 - 06/21/2019 11:46 AM
Processors, the fun thing with the competition is that it has an effect on development rates and sure money. AMD soon will release Ryzen series 3000 and guess what? Intel is lowering prices on their p...
Windows 10: New Intel Microcode for Spectre V3a, V4 & L1TF Gets Released - 11/28/2018 05:15 PM
Microsoft began rolling out Intel's new countermeasure code against the Spectre V3a, Spectre V4 and L1TF vulnerabilities through Windows Update. It starts with a patch for the latest version of Wind...
New Microsoft/Intel microcode update KB4100347 breaks Haswell-E and Broadwell-E overclocks - 09/23/2018 07:40 AM
Multiple users on the X99 platform have confirmed and are reporting that their tweaks and overclocks are no longer working after they got Microsoft update KB4100347 installed. This is an Intel Meltdo...
Rumor: Intel might cut thousands of jobs - 04/17/2016 09:20 AM
It seems that Intel might yet again need to lay-off jobs, thousands of them. The chip-designer in the past few years already significantly cut-down in staff. The cuts will reduce employment in some p...
Intel might stop mobile subsidies - 10/22/2014 08:29 AM
Market watchers have speculated that Intel will stop providing subsidies for its mobile device solutions to eliminate losses from the business; however, sources from PC players believe Intel is likely...
Senior Member
Posts: 208
Joined: 2017-09-22
It' a shame Ice Lake does not clock very high, as the increase in IPC is very good. You get good IPC but then not many C's though, one hand giveth and one hand taketh away, amen.
I assume 7nm has both IPC and clocks. AMD needs to make hay whilst the sun shines.
Senior Member
Posts: 744
Joined: 2015-05-19
Intels 14nm is still a competitive process performance-wise, and if they use their $3B to do competitive pricing, then the next year is still interesting, and even more so once Intels 7nm arrives (which should be competitive with TSMC 5nm at that point).
Senior Member
Posts: 536
Joined: 2016-10-04
LOL. Epic, who could have thought.

It' a shame Ice Lake does not clock very high, as the increase in IPC is very good. You get good IPC but then not many C's though, one hand giveth and one hand taketh away, amen.
I assume 7nm has both IPC and clocks. AMD needs to make hay whilst the sun shines.
2022 AMD going to be on Zen 5 5nm, and Ice Lake IPC is bit worse than the expected Zen 3, given the IPC gains of the Zen 2 over CFL also. In the mean time we going to have Zen 3 7nm+ and Zen 4 at 6/5nm EUV while Intel still has 14nm Skylake.
Senior Member
Posts: 536
Joined: 2016-10-04
No Intel 14nm isn't competitive any more. You cannot compare an 8core CPU (9900K) with a 12 core (3900X) or 16 core (3950X).
And that includes the next round in 2020 (Zen 3) and the CPUs after that in 2021 (Zen 4) with DDR5 & PCIe 5.0.
Senior Member
Posts: 11529
Joined: 2012-07-20
If it can't clock to 5GHz+, those chips would not be competitive. They can still be used for mobile domination.
It may still be suitable for dGPU. Intel knows, for us it is unknown.