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GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development: Opts To Focus on Specialized Processes (anandtech.com)
GlobalFoundries has made a major strategy shift announcement. The contract maker of semiconductors says it is ceasing development of bleeding edge manufacturing technologies and stop all work on its 7LP (7 nm) fabrication processes, which will not be used for any client. From a report: Instead, the company will focus on specialized process technologies for clients in emerging high-growth markets. These technologies will initially be based on the company's 14LPP/12LP platform and will include RF, embedded memory, and low power features. Because of the strategy shift, GF will cut 5% of its staff as well as renegotiate its WSA and IP-related deals with AMD and IBM.
GlobalFoundries was on track to tape out its clients' first chips made using its 7 nm process technology in the fourth quarter of this year, but "a few weeks ago" the company decided to take a drastic strategical turn, says Gary Patton. The CTO stressed that the decision was made not based on technical issues that the company faced, but on a careful consideration of business opportunities the company had with its 7LP platform as well as financial concerns. On the heels of this announcement, AMD said today that it will move all of its 7nm production on both CPUs and GPUs to TSMC.
GlobalFoundries was on track to tape out its clients' first chips made using its 7 nm process technology in the fourth quarter of this year, but "a few weeks ago" the company decided to take a drastic strategical turn, says Gary Patton. The CTO stressed that the decision was made not based on technical issues that the company faced, but on a careful consideration of business opportunities the company had with its 7LP platform as well as financial concerns. On the heels of this announcement, AMD said today that it will move all of its 7nm production on both CPUs and GPUs to TSMC.
Smart move. There is just too much bleeding edge science and engineering at 7nm, this is a physical reality. Stick with profitable, mature fab tech and iteratively improve it. Get into 7nm when some of the horrible EUV issues have well known solutions, which should carry on to 5nm.
Meanwhile, the big Asian fabs are said to be ramping 7nm production, but as far as I know, nobody has seen actual parts arrive beyond samples. Certainly not enough to have a good idea about yields. Definitely a believe it when you see it situation. Of course, I hope that Samsung and TSMC have actually overtaken Intel at this transition, and given the economics of the situation it seems inevitable, but we do not have proof it has actually happened yet.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
For the big asian fabs, imaginary density continues to track Moore's law pretty well.
Just because they say it's 7nm doesn't mean it is 7nm
Firstly, their definition of "7nm" is actually, about the same as Intel 10nm, it's stupid marketing lies and speak.
Secondly, Intel themselves are stuggling like total crazy to achieve 10nm reliably.
So, to answer your question, yeah, I think Moores Law is very very close to dead if not dead. Just go look up benchmarks for processors designed 5 years ago, they're still viable now.
If you compare frequency, IPC, core count, relatively, you'll see the amount of progress we've had in the past 5 years is, atrociously bad, very, very bad.
This is why mom / pop PCs built even up to 7 years ago, just need 2 more sticks of ram, the dust blown out and an SSD with a Windows re-install, they'll be fine for another 5.
It's over, no more bleeding edge, insane fast PCs. Just very very small burps forward.
Only if you only look at Intel processors. Current ARM processors blow away the ones from five years ago. Same with GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA. AMD's current x86 processors are also way faster than their ones from five years ago. It's just Intel that's falling behind.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Intel is having trouble with 7 nm because it's using 4 masks to get there. So, it's really using older tech with many steps to etch smaller w/ these overlays. If you have to run the silicon through the light 4 times in different positions using different patterns, you can get horrible yields as the slightest deviation will either ruin chips or severely impact their performance.
And yet, that is exactly what TSMC is doing (i.e., no EUV) and they are supposedly ramping up volume production, though I would not bet my life on the truth of this. Intel just pushed it ever so slightly too far with about 10% smaller half pitch than TSMC, and it seems, it just didn't work out. BTW, Intel is not having trouble with 7nm because there is no such thing as Intel 7nm.
I haven't seen anything credible beyond 5 nm -- and that wasn't even using silicon as the substrate.
Google "gate all around".
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.