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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
already on 4nm.
Number of fabs owned by AMD: 0.
GlobalFoundries has abandoned 7nm development, source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-all-7nm-development
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.
Thanks but sad to know that leaves just TSMC and Samsung.
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.
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.
We have reach an inflection point where the foundry industry must become a commons to make further progress. I really can't think of any historical analogy, this is something new. The costs and risks are just too high for any one player to bear them alone, and yet, competing vendors cannot tolerate one single company getting a choke hold on the entire industry.
Samsung is showing impressive resilience, they will be the last player to fold, leaving the entire pot to TSMC. Intel will give up their fabs within two years, just run them until they can't sell any more 14nm and 10nm parts, then bulldoze them.
If industry players are unable to negotiate a formula for sharing fabs at future nodes then governments will. That will be messy.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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.
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.
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.
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