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Intel's First 10nm Cannon Lake CPU Sees the Light of Day (anandtech.com)
Artem Tashkinov writes: A Chinese retailer has started selling a laptop featuring Intel's first 10nm CPU the Intel Core i3 8121U. Intel promised to start producing 10nm CPUs in 2016 but the rollout has been postponed almost until the second half of 2018. It's worth noting that this CPU does not have integrated graphics enabled and features only two cores.
AnandTech opines: "This machine listed online means that we can confirm that Intel is indeed shipping 10nm components into the consumer market. Shipping a low-end dual core processor with disabled graphics doesn't inspire confidence, especially as it is labelled under the 8th gen designation, and not something new and shiny under the 9th gen -- although Intel did state in a recent earnings call that serious 10nm volume and revenue is now a 2019 target. These parts are, for better or worse, helping Intel generate some systems with the new technology. We've never before seen Intel commercially use low-end processors to introduce a new manufacturing process, although this might be the norm from now on."
AnandTech opines: "This machine listed online means that we can confirm that Intel is indeed shipping 10nm components into the consumer market. Shipping a low-end dual core processor with disabled graphics doesn't inspire confidence, especially as it is labelled under the 8th gen designation, and not something new and shiny under the 9th gen -- although Intel did state in a recent earnings call that serious 10nm volume and revenue is now a 2019 target. These parts are, for better or worse, helping Intel generate some systems with the new technology. We've never before seen Intel commercially use low-end processors to introduce a new manufacturing process, although this might be the norm from now on."
This CPU is nearly 3 years late.
Intel are having immense difficulty with the 10nm move. Down from 14nm (which was 'refreshed' twice)
What this means is that other manufactuers are now genuinely catching up to Intel, as much as I didn't believe it, it does seem that (I think TMSC?) is now just about ready to start putting out 7nm products.
(Note, they all bloody lie about the figures, TMSC 7nm is basically about Intels 10nm)
That does mean that AMD may be producing CPUs with a similar transistor density and voltage requirements to Intel soon, meaning the only advantage available is processor design, not manufacturing process.
Regardless of AMDs improved competition potential here though, is the concern that the move from 22nm to 14nm to 10nm has been AWFULLY slow and it's one of the driving factors in why computer processing hasn't really improved hugely in the past 4 to 10 years. It's improved but nothing at all like the previous decade.
If you're an enthusiast dying for top of the line performance with a deep budget, this has been painful, as you upgrade every 18 months to 20% faster, instead of 70+% faster. If you're a homelab server nerd who wants to run a great little VM cluster, on some mid range, low power chips, the chips you could've bought 3 years ago, are probably fairly viable, still, to todays options.
Intel has delayed the rest of their 10nm processors I think until next year. Means the Intel 8700k 6core and the rumoured 8750 / 8900 (?) 8 core model (soonish) will be the best you can probably buy, for the next 18 months. If you've been holding off upgrading, may be worth considering.
It kind of sucks, I'm in the 'want a nice, low power server, but still kinda powerful' camp and I don't want 85w of CPU in my cupboard, but I would like at least 6, half decent threads. It's possible, but would've been much more likely with the shrinks being on time.
Most likely by mistake last Sunday Intel released Z390 chipset information. The page has since been pulled down because this chipset was rumored to be accompanied with octa-core Coffee Lake CPUs which are yet to be announced.
Next time I'm gonna web-archive their mistakes ;-)
Have you seen their R&D expenditures?
Designing a 14nm tech process in the 70's/80's was impossible because it has taken billions of dollars of investments and new technologies (some of which weren't invented at Intel) to get there. Also, considering that they've rehashed their 14nm tech process twice and their first 10nm part is a castrated 2core CPU minus iGPU, it surely looks like 10nm is extremely difficult/costly to get right.