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Intel's 14nm Broadwell Delayed Because of Low Yield
judgecorp writes "Intel has put back the delivery of its 14nm Broadwell desktop chip by a quarter because of a manufacturing issue that leaves it with too high a density of defects. The problem has been fixed, says CEO Brian Krzanich, who says, 'This happens sometimes in development phases.'"
The good news is that it is just a defect density issue. A first round of tweaks failed to increase yield, but Intel seems to think a few more improvements to the 14nm process will result in acceptable yield.
For others like me who had to look this up, link.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Actually if the rumors some of the other sites are saying is true the 14nm delay isn't because of low yield...its because nobody is buying. Oh sure the yields aren't great but like AMD it looks like Intel has realized there really ain't a point in constantly putting out faster and better chips when they can't move the ones they got.
What both need to realize, and what will be biting ARM right in the ass in less than 18 months by my calculations is thus....The software just hasn't kept up with the hardware and X86 by switching from MHz wars to core wars went from "good enough" to "insanely overpowered" and when you can't even stress the one you have, what is the point of buying a new one? Intel and AMD are finding this carries over to other areas as well, take laptops for example. Used to you could set your watch by my customers replacing their laptops, every 2 years for the business guys and every 3 max for the home users, because the combo of heat cycling and software requirements would make them break or painfully slow, now? Well most of the time the laptop is twiddling its thumbs so its not getting hot enough to kill it and even a 5+ year laptop these days is a C2D or Turion X2 with 3+ GB of RAM and 300GB+ HDDs, more than Joe and Sally Average need frankly.
Oh and for the guys praising ARM and thinking that train is gonna keep on rolling? You got 18-24 months by my calculations and then? Hope you enjoy the same boat Intel and AMD are in now. The reason why is simple...ARM doesn't scale well and there is only so many cores and so much MHz you can push in a thin and light before you end up with battery life measured in minutes so just like how Intel and AMD hit the heat wall? So too will ARM hit the battery wall. When you combine this with the incredible race to the bottom going on right now, we are talking about dual core tablets in the $70 range at Chinamart and quads starting at $100? it won't be long before everybody and their dog has a phone and tablet that is faster than they know what to do with and then like X86 they won't replace until the unit dies.
so I wouldn't be surprised if intel just sits on 14nm until they get it down so well they can sell it as cheap or cheaper than current chips, after all AMD has already said it'll be a year before they release a new chip and why should they? Thanks to having a mature process they can sell hexacores for $100 and octocores for $130 and their yields on the APUs is so good the OEMs are selling quad laptops for $399, why spend all that money for a new chip when sales are already depressed? The same goes for Intel, they have chips at just about every price point, mature process means high yields and more profits per wafer, and with the global economy a crawl and PCs becoming like appliances why come out with a new chip? Stick with what you've got, they are several orders of magnitude faster than Joe and Sally know what to do with anyway.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The reason that there's less overclocking headroom has little to do with the architecture design and a lot to do with the crappy thermal solution Intel started using on their IB and Haswell chips. Basically they started using some really crappy thermal paste instead of soldering the IHS like they did with Sandy Bridge. People who delid their chips and use better thermal interface material get far better results. Some people can get upwards of an extra GHz in speed when over-clocking and see some fairly substantial temperature drops as well.