It's been reported that both AMD/Nvidia are skipping 10nm. So it seems like this is only going to apply to phone SoCs and whatnot. I am kind of glad that Samsung is pushing ahead with their fabs though. Intel clearly is hitting some roadblocks moving to it's 10nm (to be fair their 10nm is more advanced than Samsung's) but as long as someone is making progress it's good news.

What intel needs on 10nm is to achieve at least same frequency as now. Because their IPC bumps are not very high per generation and people are not going to "upgrade" to chip with same performance just because it eats bit less power. (except mobile devices) While AMD delivered still very interesting chip(s) on process which clocks worse than before. This 3~4GHz thing has some advantages on new architecture. As Zen+ IPC will improve and clock is likely to improve too. As for AMD/nVidia skipping 10nm, it is just question of parameters of this manufacturing technology. If it proves to be good enough upgrade in energy efficiency, clock or cost, it will be used as long as 7nm will be far away. Side note, we are getting there, limits of silicon are near...

It's been reported that both AMD/Nvidia are skipping 10nm.

They still only have a single gen out of the 16/14nm, so it would seem wasteful to drop any optimisation and jump to 10nm only to start from a scratch. Not that Nvidia wouldn't have the money for it. If 7nm is ready when they are ready to move on, it would seem like a more efficient move. But then again, I'm not a semiconductor engineer.

Side note, we are getting there, limits of silicon are near...

Yeah, perhaps hitting that ceiling will force prices to come down. However, I have a feeling there are other technologies waiting in the wings...

Yeah, perhaps hitting that ceiling will force prices to come down. However, I have a feeling there are other technologies waiting in the wings...

Prices will go up then, since the chips will be force to be bigger.

Prices will go up then, since the chips will be force to be bigger.

If they go bigger, then, obviously other things like cooling would need to be better as well, unless oc becomes significantly less and power-usage can still be improved.

intels 10nm designs are certainly more dense/complex than any competition, but samsungs fabrication is far from corner-cutting. the fact that they are powering forward is a great sign, its very encouraging...regardless of the fact that the fruits of their efforts will be thrown into phones (ugh) on that note, lets just hope that TSMC/glofo can keep up. electron drift is scary & im not looking forward to the next generation of die shrinks...because thats gonna be it, unless theres some unforeseen monumental breakthrough.