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Intel Says They Aren't Abandoning 10nm Chips, Despite Report Saying They're Canceled (pcmag.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Magazine: Intel is denying a new report that claims the chipmaker is abandoning its 10 nanometer manufacturing process following years of delays. "Media reports published today that Intel is ending work on the 10nm process are untrue," the company tweeted on Monday. Hours prior to the tweet, semiconductor news site SemiAccurate claimed that Intel was pulling the plug on the chip-making technology over the company's ongoing struggles to bring it to full production. Chips built with the 10nm process were originally slated to arrive in 2016, but the company has repeatedly pushed that launch date back. During Intel's last earnings call, executives said they now expect 10nm chips to officially drop during the 2019 holiday season.
In response to SemiAccurate's report, Intel said it continues to make "good progress" on the 10nm technology. "Yields are improving consistent with the timeline we shared during our last earnings report," the chipmaker added in its tweet. The next-generation silicon will supposedly offer a 25 percent performance increase over 14nm-manufactured technology. The 10nm chips will also be able to run on 50 percent less power when clocked at the same performance of a 14nm processor. Intel will hold an earnings call on Thursday, so expect company executives to elaborate on 10nm's progress then.
In response to SemiAccurate's report, Intel said it continues to make "good progress" on the 10nm technology. "Yields are improving consistent with the timeline we shared during our last earnings report," the chipmaker added in its tweet. The next-generation silicon will supposedly offer a 25 percent performance increase over 14nm-manufactured technology. The 10nm chips will also be able to run on 50 percent less power when clocked at the same performance of a 14nm processor. Intel will hold an earnings call on Thursday, so expect company executives to elaborate on 10nm's progress then.
Yes, it seems molecules migrating from one location to another represent a real problem when it comes to miniaturising electronics, once you get below a certain size (molecules mutually reinforcing their or is that your preferred location). High clock speeds and high operating temperatures also do not help.
So shorter travel distances are going to become the next big thing, computers on a chip. Less flexibility in design but the more in can pack in the closest possible space, the higher the speed without extra energy. So multiple co-processing computers on chips or silicon has to go.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Canceled some production but not all .. so I guess the report, from SemiAccurate, was only half right.
Thank you. Try the fish.
TSMC and Global Foundries are already moving to the 7nm node.
So far all Intel has managed with their 10nm process is delays. It was supposed to be out in 16 and now they are talking about holiday 19
2 stories talking about Intel, instead of 0. Result: +cancel -cancel 10nm = 0, +ad +ad = 2.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
already on 4nm.
Number of fabs owned by AMD: 0.
And do you know what! There is life outside Intel!
Here is a delightful little video of me re-enacting my behavior on my last days at Intel. A real wonderful dance!
And Arthur Rosenau' love splashed down from the heavens! and made me almost completely forget Intel until I saw this article.
Thank you to the folks at SemiAccurate for the story!
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
Intel is a publicly traded company and bad news like you are abandoning the hopes you pinned on a new fabrication tech would severely damage their stock price. If you recall, during the aftermath of Meltdown, Intel made it sound like AMD chips had the same issue by conflating Meltdown and Spectre issues. Oh and the patch to the Linux kernel would have slowed down AMD chips as well which was an "accident" for sure.
Intel cannot compete but they can lie and cheat with the best of them.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Sorry, what? You're trying to relate Donald Trump to CPU technology? You mad because of politics and this is where you take it out? Can you be more retarded?
You forgot a letter. After ARM cleans their clocks and Intel's stock collapses to a tenth its value, Apple will buy them for their engineering talent at a cost of pennies on the dollar. So Apple Makes Intel Great Again. You know, AMIGA.
I'm not sure if that's a pun on the "migrant" bit or a Commodore joke, so interpret the joke in whatever way seems funniest to you.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Intel has effectively missed it's 10nm die shrink when Samsung and TSMC are on 7nm. Intel better have 5nm in it's back pocket because it's pointless building any 10nm CPU's now (maybe other chips instead.)
These values (14 nm, 10 nm, 7 nm) are not directly comparable. These days, the values seems more like marketing numbers.
Intel does need to focus more on innovation and implementation and less on customer segmentation, though. Intel used to be so far ahead that even an inferior processor design was on par with the competition, due to the advantage in fabrication.
Actually, Intel's 10nm process results in features of almost exactly the same size as TSMC's 7nm process.
So yes, they're behind, but not by nearly as far as you think.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Two days before AMD reports, three days before Intel reports, Semiaccurate floats this rumor with pretty much nothing to back it up. Here's the meat of their argument Note: The following is analysis for professional level subscribers only. So this is about signing up subscribers? Or an attempt at illegal stock manipulation? Both? It is certainly not about quality journalism.
I am definitely an AMD fanboy, full disclosure there. But that doesn't make me an Intel hater, at least not when they lay off the dirty tricks, which appears to pretty much the situation at the moment. So... balanced assessment: no reason to doubt Intel's revised 10nm production schedule. This is all about yields as Semiaccurate is fond of pointing out.
You can see from this that Intel's 10nm fin pitch is a bit more aggressive than TSMC's 7nm, 6% smaller. Intel's minimum metal pitch is a lot more aggressive, 22%. This is all right at the limit of what deep UV alone can do, so that might be Intel's bridge too far right there. I have a whole lot of difficultly believing that Intel did not learn enough from their aborted ramp up last spring to know exactly what they need to do to hit their yields, most probably including respinning their masks to a density nearly identical to TSMC.
Buried in there somewhere I did find one credible little nugget... Semiaccurate pointed out that last spring's 8121U Cannon Lake part, produced in limited quantities and only ever seen in the hands of a few reviewers, is specced without a GPU. Not because it doesn't have one, but because does have one but it doesn't work. I find that credible. Debugging both a processor and a GPU is much more work that just a processor or GPU alone. In contrast, AMD doesn't try to fab APUs until both the processor and GPU have been successfully fabbed separately. Excellent strategy, a big risk reduction.
Another huge thing AMD did to cut the 7nm risk was, jumping into bed with the phone industry. Intel convinced themselves it was a good idea to go it alone as usual, and were proved colossally wrong. Though I am not going to claim any special inside information, I think that Intel is going to bring up its Cannon Lake production successfully, 3 or 4 years behind schedule as they say, and that this is the end of the line for Intel as an independent fab. It's simple: the days of always being a node ahead are over, today they are half a node behind. From here on, there are no advantages to running an independent fab, only disadvantages. When Intel finally does ramp up Cannon Lake they will be in an excellent position to negotiate a new, cooperative deal with the rest of the industry, but if they persist in marching to their own drumbeat they will pay an enormous cost in market share and operating income over the next few years.
I am going to take a wild guess here: Intel plays around with EUV a bit, gets some first hand data on what horribly nasty stuff that is, then makes a deal with TSMC. Intel is going to do just fine as a pure Engineering/IP player like AMD but they risk everything by running their own vanity fab.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
So Apple Makes Intel Great Again. You know, AMIGA.
OK, that's funny. Pointless but funny. Where's your funny mod?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The article you linked compares Intel to Global Foundries, which doesn't even have a 7nm process as of today. You're still right, but try my links
Note that Samsung also went for 36nm minimum metal pitch and for what it's worth, also seem to be behind TSMC by about the same lag as Intel. It's starting to look like TSMC went for exactly the right amount of conservative.
I think that Intel is behind by exactly as much as I think :) Translation: Intel is now behind by about a year, or half a node, whatever that is.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
They found their mole.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
5nm (using TSMC terminology) will be even more nuts than 10nm/7nm because it will be fully EUV. EUV is just scary. Consider there: it was only in the last couple of months that ASML managed to achieve the necessary 250 watt EUV output power, that takes a megawatt of input power. Optical materials are opaque to EUV so its all done with mirrors. Each mirror in the chain, and there are many, aborbs 20-30% of the power. That all turns into heat. So each stepper has a medium sized creek flowing through it to keep it from melting. Those are just a couple of the horrors.
Another one, pellicles (what's a pellicle?) They aren't ready for prime time. There is exactly one company, ASML, making all the EUV equipment and they are currently burning the midnight oil trying to develop usable pellicles. As I understand it, they currently aren't quite transparent enough (88% minimum required vs 83% current maximum achieved) or durable enough, by about a factor of three. Without pellicles, nobody is making any chips with EUV, and nobody is getting past 7nm.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Great job "forecasting" there grandpa, lol? Why don't you give unsolicited micro-lessons on a subject you know something about or actually work in instead? Who knows, someone might even listen slightly or care in the least. K thx bai
Somebody modded it up, and you down, sigh. OTOH, it wasn't necessary to be quite that abrasive. OTOOH, you were responding to possibly the worst post in the entire universe. The only sorrier thing I can think of is, somebody modded it up.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Intel needs to give up its fabs like AMD. Sooner or later they will. Sooner will be less painful.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
For real, semi accurate. I guess they warned us...
That's actually an advantage now.
While Intel has to pay the development cost for their new processes out of their own pockets, TSMC's development is paid for by all of their customers. AMD's 2019 products are partially funded by Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, etc. If AMD tried to go it alone, they'd be two process nodes behind Intel instead of about to take the lead.
They're not comparable, no. But Intel had healthy 14nm production in 2014, now they're saying late 2019 at the earliest for 10nm so five years with nothing more than enhancements. And TSMC is shipping 7nm in the iPhone Xs right now and has just announced they expect 20% of their 2019 revenue to be from their 7nm process, which is fairly equivalent to Intel's 10nm. Samsung says their 7nm is ready for production too. Basically they've lost their entire lead and is already trailing a bit, they'll be fully competitive if they can launch their 10nm but they no longer get the holy trifecta of a better manufacturing process: Lower cost, better performance and higher power efficiency.
I think the greatest danger to Intel is that Apple finds it's able to produce comparable light desktop/laptop performance on ARM, if Intel can't provide superior chips there's very little reason for Apple to stay. They've done arch changes before from Motorola -> PowerPC -> x86, they know what it's like and with the iPhone/iPad CPU/GPU design in-house you know they'll be lusting for the Mac business. If they do I expect a full volley with new MacBook, MacBook Air, iMac and Mac mini ARM models but to leave MacBook Pro / iMac Pro / Mac Pro on x86 initially. If the rumors are true there'll be a new iPad Pro out soon with a A12X processor, that'll be a good clue as to how far it's off.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Semiconductor fabs owned by Apple = fabs owned by Alphabet/(Google) = fabs owned by Huawei = fabs owned by IBM = (general purpose semiconductor) fabs owned by Sony = n
Semiconductor fabs owned by AMD = n = 0
The two big that still designs and manufactures processors are Intel and Samsung.
amd continues to fail in the single threaded and single core performance metrics comparison with intel
"Fail" is the wrong word. A bit behind would be accurate, and that is Intel's last remaining bragging point. A couple of things. Current Ryzen is still a full node behind Intel, that it manages to clobber Intel in multi-core and put in a respectable showing in single core is truly impressive. Second thing, if TSMC actually delivers on time then AMD will suddenly be a node ahead of Intel for the first time in history. Third thing, buzz has it that Zen 2 improves IPC by 13%, which will bring it roughly even in IPC with Intel, while retaining its massive lead in value.
So "fail" is the wrong word, indeed.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Note that nobody has actually seen TSMC 7nm volume production hit retail channels as of today. Supposedly, Apple will change that in a few weeks, but until they actually do, everybody is still playing bullshit poker.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Another one, pellicles (what's a pellicle?) They aren't ready for prime time. There is exactly one company, ASML, making all the EUV equipment and they are currently burning the midnight oil trying to develop usable pellicles. As I understand it, they currently aren't quite transparent enough (88% minimum required vs 83% current maximum achieved) or durable enough, by about a factor of three. Without pellicles, nobody is making any chips with EUV, and nobody is getting past 7nm.
I believe it's a protective layer over the photomask. I remember reading, last time the EUV thing came up, that TSMC were considering running without using one at all, and taking the hit that they'd need to replace the mask frequently. That might have been just for initial runs or something, I don't really know.
Uhhh I'm afraid he is right as Nvidia is getting chips made by TMSC which means their money is helping fund TMSC's process which is benefiting AMD.
And I'd say its looking more and more like AMD selling off their fabs when they did was the smart move, as they can now go with whomever has the best process while their former fabs (Global Foundry) has given up on hitting 7nm and appears to be intending to just milk whatever money they can make off their 12nm and 14nm fabs making memory chips and working for smaller players.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
All I see here is fanboi vs. fanboi. Long Live 62K!
That's racist, the new rules says he has to get a trophy for showing up and then he gets another when he figures out what he responded to.
Both could be right. Charlie Demerjian have a way to play with words (if one is nice), to exaggerate (if one isn't).
Intel could have scrapped their original 10nm process and created something new but still labeled 10nm: Intel kills off the original process but is still on track with 10nm.
I can see the Slashdot headline now: "Are Computers on a Chip a money-grabbing attempt to bypass right to repair laws?"
Fuck you it was early and I'm not old as fuck like you.
Won't Intel also outsource some of their chipset production to TSMC?
Would Intel's money benefiting AMD as well?
Or maybe they'll just keep bumping up the capabilities of iOS on the iPad and eventually you'll actually want to use an iPad Pro for serious work, with the 8 core processor or whatever it will have.
There's not enough TDP headroom to make use of it, comparing the A10/A10X used in the current tablets it's just 50% more cores (2+2 -> 3+3) and there's probably no point in scaling up small cores further, the A12X might go from 2+4 to 4+4 but that would practically be a crippled quad-core for performance oriented tasks. Plus the iPad Pro 12.9" display is 5.5MP while a desktop/laptop today should at least support Apple's 5K displays of 15MP, so I imagine the GPU will need a big boost too so I think dedicated chips are in order. But it's absolutely possible that they'd run iOS and not macOS though, with all the lock down that'd involve. Of course /. would rage about that, but I think consumers would buy it. They're certainly buying iPhones and boot locked Android...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No one said it would be easy.
It is no different than returning a rocket booster for reuse. They said it couldn't be done. Not easy but they found a way.
There is more to fabrication than just the size process. Though some companies do come to the chip production companies with a fully laid out internal chip design, this is very rare for tightly packed layouts. Many times the fabs work with companies to adress overheating in specific parts of the IC. One of Intel's secret sauces is how this is done. If they were to use a 3rd party fab, parts, or all of their process could be leaked to competitors.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
I'm thinking not, considering the fucktons of money they're pouring into their still-expanding DX-1 fab at the Ronler Acres complex in Hillsboro, Oregon (let alone, probably, the additional fabs in Chandler, AZ).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Right, the pellicle protects the mask. Everybody with EUV plans (just TSMC, Samsung and Intel now, by my count) is going to start introducing EUV without pellicles, but only for larger features like contacts and vias that are widely separated so that dirt accumulating on the mask is unlikely to create chip defects. For a full EUV process as is absolutely required to go beyond 7nm, not using pellicles will prohibitively shorten the mask life. So they are absolutely required. The difficulty with EUV is, all matter becomes opaque, except for extremely thin membranes. Something like 16nm I think. You can see how that might be a bit tricky to fabricate and work with.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Of all the apps benchmarked, which ones were compiled with the Intel compiler?
More to the point, modern games don't bottleneck on the CPU any more, all the heavy lifting is done on the GPU. So single core benches just don't rule the world like they used to. Now, Intel's go to strategy for cheating the benchmarks is to avoid benchmarking Vulkan/DX12 games so rendering bottlenecks on a single core, and gloss over the fact that this amounts to optimizing for obsolete game engines. Even that skulduggery isn't going to be enough to hold AMD down in 2019.
BTW, this is the main reason that AMD developed Mantle, to exploit their advantage in cores per dollar. Which advantage AMD still very much has as of Intel's 9th gen release last week, which you can't actually buy, or if you can buy them then you pay too much or they run too hot. All of these things the result of trying to shoehorn marketing's 10nm performance specs into engineering's 14nm node.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.