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Am I missing something here or is Intel starting to lag behind on Fab Tech? I thought they were years and billions ahead?!?

robin_reala 8y ago
To be fair to Intel, ‘nm’ hasn’t really meant anything for years now (it’s today’s ‘MHz’) but their 10nm process has been famously delayed, they were originally planning a launch for 2016 and it’s only been in the last couple of months that products have started to trickle out.
- tutanchamun 8y ago
  Yeah, Intels 10nm is comparable to other companies 7nm: https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/6713-14nm-16nm-10nm-7nm-what-we-know-now.html https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/6713-14nm-16nm-10nm-7...
  - phire 8y ago
    And as long as it doesn't get delayed again, Intel's 10nm will reach volume production at around the same time as other companies 7nm.
    - KSS42 8y ago
      The rumor is that Apple's next SOC is TSMC 7nm and is in high volume production now.
siberianbear 8y ago
It's a good question. I've thought the same thing. Historically, Intel's competitive advantage has been in manufacturing. As that slows down due to the general slowdown of Moore's law or just because they don't stay on top of their game, it seems likely that AMD, ARM and Nvidia will eat more and more of Intel's lunch.
dis-sys 8y ago
> I thought they were years and billions ahead?!? according to their big mouth marketing department, yes. according to reality or market, no.
veebat 8y ago
The most likely cause of Intel's lagging is a wall of cost/benefit to being both designer and fab. This hit AMD earlier by being smaller(and arguably, with a different management style, AMD could have held on to their fabs longer) but each node only gets more expensive and harder to keep busy with orders which in turn means a greater need for external customers to fund R&D. Intel had a reprieve of almost a decade with a weak AMD that let them coast along with the desktop monopoly and extract a yawn-worthy 5-10% improvement per generation, but now that they have the incentive to compete again they're struggling to get their house in order - the chip design hasn't had a major refresh in a long time and they have been very late with their version of 10nm. So they're really at a crossroads now where they can't rely on old tactics and their long-term prospects are in serious doubt, since they didn't position themselves to counter the efficient small-core/big-package architecture that AMD is pushing with the Zen chips. For now, they can still put out competitive flagship product launches simply by binning extremely expensive parts and running them hot(e.g. compare i9 and Threadripper) but that advantage might erode within one more generation.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Intel's biggest mistake over the past 10 years was not to open it's foundry services sooner now it's custom foundry services are nearly irrelevant outside of a few niche markets. Mobile SoC design and being answerable to a huge number of very large customers forced fabs to evolve their processes in a way where market forces and customer demand forces requirements rather than office politics. Intel has still an edge on many parts of the manufacturing process but as far as the lithography goes they've lost this round. Luckily for them their 10nm was much more ambitious than any of the 7nm designs and they are facing problems that other fabs will not face until their 5nm and beyond processes. Intel is also fighting a much tougher fight now TSMC was always good (better than AMD/GloFo) but now you also have the Alliance which is IBM/Samsung/GloFo which combine resources on process R&D. GloFo botched their 20/22nm process and had to scrap it completely and if they couldn't use Samsung's 20nm process and call it 14nm AMD's Zen would likely would never have materialized because of the WSA. And this is essentially the gist of things GloFo/Samsung/IBM are essentially a united front, TSMC is as capable as ever and what all of these 4 (and more) share in common is that they answer to external customers so if something doesn't work there is a much bigger pressure to drop it and find something that would instead of sinking more and more cost into it because of internal politics.
mtgx 8y ago
Yes, Intel has fallen behind already. Their 10nm process node and a supposed equivalent to TSMC, GloFo, and Samsung's 7nm nodes, won't be ready for mass production until 2019. Meanwhile all the other foundries will have their 7nm nodes ready for mass production this year. Also, it's rumored that Intel's 10nm will actually be worse for clock speeds than its 14nm is.
- nadioca 8y ago
  Intel could ultimately try to make their processors using the other foundries until they get their tech sorted out. If I'm not wrong Samsung sells phones with Qualcomm processors and, consumers don't care much about that.
Symmetry 8y ago
As feature sizes shrink cobalt start to look like a better choice for implementing wires than copper for reasons of electromigration and mean free path. Intel wanted to get a jump on this for their 10nm process and so decided to switch over to cobalt before TSMC, Global, etc. But they've been having huge problems getting it to work and 10nm has slipped from 2017 to at least 2019 and their process lead is now essentially gone. They've actually released one chip on 10nm but it's performing much worse than the equivalent 14nm chip so it needs a lot more work.
- Apofis 8y ago
  I'm assuming others are also having difficulty with cobalt, but I'm guessing that once their final new cobalt chip is out, it won't be hard for others to figure out what they did unless Intel can patent it somehow.
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  Apparently Imec claims that for the time being (down to the "3nm" node) copper beats cobalt: https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/imec-extends-damascene-metallization-towards-the-3nm-technology-node https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/imec-extends-damascene-...
ChuckMcM 8y ago
"All exponentials are s-curves" - basically you can be years ahead until it takes years to make any sort of gain. Intel fab technology has been years ahead of the rest of the industry for a while, but as we reach the flattening off point of power, performance, and cost gains, the difference in capabilities between a chip that is years behind the leader gets to be less and less. Google in search, Intel it processor fabs, ARM in power efficiency, Etc. During the time of fast growth it is a huge differentiator, and once that fast growth has been exhausted you need a different differentiator.

robin_reala 8y ago

To be fair to Intel, ‘nm’ hasn’t really meant anything for years now (it’s today’s ‘MHz’) but their 10nm process has been famously delayed, they were originally planning a launch for 2016 and it’s only been in the last couple of months that products have started to trickle out.

tutanchamun 8y ago
Yeah, Intels 10nm is comparable to other companies 7nm: https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/6713-14nm-16nm-10nm-7nm-what-we-know-now.html https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/6713-14nm-16nm-10nm-7...
- phire 8y ago
  And as long as it doesn't get delayed again, Intel's 10nm will reach volume production at around the same time as other companies 7nm.
  - KSS42 8y ago
    The rumor is that Apple's next SOC is TSMC 7nm and is in high volume production now.

siberianbear 8y ago

It's a good question. I've thought the same thing. Historically, Intel's competitive advantage has been in manufacturing. As that slows down due to the general slowdown of Moore's law or just because they don't stay on top of their game, it seems likely that AMD, ARM and Nvidia will eat more and more of Intel's lunch.

dis-sys 8y ago

> I thought they were years and billions ahead?!? according to their big mouth marketing department, yes. according to reality or market, no.

veebat 8y ago

The most likely cause of Intel's lagging is a wall of cost/benefit to being both designer and fab. This hit AMD earlier by being smaller(and arguably, with a different management style, AMD could have held on to their fabs longer) but each node only gets more expensive and harder to keep busy with orders which in turn means a greater need for external customers to fund R&D. Intel had a reprieve of almost a decade with a weak AMD that let them coast along with the desktop monopoly and extract a yawn-worthy 5-10% improvement per generation, but now that they have the incentive to compete again they're struggling to get their house in order - the chip design hasn't had a major refresh in a long time and they have been very late with their version of 10nm. So they're really at a crossroads now where they can't rely on old tactics and their long-term prospects are in serious doubt, since they didn't position themselves to counter the efficient small-core/big-package architecture that AMD is pushing with the Zen chips. For now, they can still put out competitive flagship product launches simply by binning extremely expensive parts and running them hot(e.g. compare i9 and Threadripper) but that advantage might erode within one more generation.

dogma1138 8y ago
Intel's biggest mistake over the past 10 years was not to open it's foundry services sooner now it's custom foundry services are nearly irrelevant outside of a few niche markets. Mobile SoC design and being answerable to a huge number of very large customers forced fabs to evolve their processes in a way where market forces and customer demand forces requirements rather than office politics. Intel has still an edge on many parts of the manufacturing process but as far as the lithography goes they've lost this round. Luckily for them their 10nm was much more ambitious than any of the 7nm designs and they are facing problems that other fabs will not face until their 5nm and beyond processes. Intel is also fighting a much tougher fight now TSMC was always good (better than AMD/GloFo) but now you also have the Alliance which is IBM/Samsung/GloFo which combine resources on process R&D. GloFo botched their 20/22nm process and had to scrap it completely and if they couldn't use Samsung's 20nm process and call it 14nm AMD's Zen would likely would never have materialized because of the WSA. And this is essentially the gist of things GloFo/Samsung/IBM are essentially a united front, TSMC is as capable as ever and what all of these 4 (and more) share in common is that they answer to external customers so if something doesn't work there is a much bigger pressure to drop it and find something that would instead of sinking more and more cost into it because of internal politics.

mtgx 8y ago

Yes, Intel has fallen behind already. Their 10nm process node and a supposed equivalent to TSMC, GloFo, and Samsung's 7nm nodes, won't be ready for mass production until 2019. Meanwhile all the other foundries will have their 7nm nodes ready for mass production this year. Also, it's rumored that Intel's 10nm will actually be worse for clock speeds than its 14nm is.

nadioca 8y ago
Intel could ultimately try to make their processors using the other foundries until they get their tech sorted out. If I'm not wrong Samsung sells phones with Qualcomm processors and, consumers don't care much about that.

Symmetry 8y ago

As feature sizes shrink cobalt start to look like a better choice for implementing wires than copper for reasons of electromigration and mean free path. Intel wanted to get a jump on this for their 10nm process and so decided to switch over to cobalt before TSMC, Global, etc. But they've been having huge problems getting it to work and 10nm has slipped from 2017 to at least 2019 and their process lead is now essentially gone. They've actually released one chip on 10nm but it's performing much worse than the equivalent 14nm chip so it needs a lot more work.

Apofis 8y ago
I'm assuming others are also having difficulty with cobalt, but I'm guessing that once their final new cobalt chip is out, it won't be hard for others to figure out what they did unless Intel can patent it somehow.
deepnotderp 8y ago
Apparently Imec claims that for the time being (down to the "3nm" node) copper beats cobalt: https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/imec-extends-damascene-metallization-towards-the-3nm-technology-node https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/imec-extends-damascene-...

ChuckMcM 8y ago

"All exponentials are s-curves" - basically you can be years ahead until it takes years to make any sort of gain. Intel fab technology has been years ahead of the rest of the industry for a while, but as we reach the flattening off point of power, performance, and cost gains, the difference in capabilities between a chip that is years behind the leader gets to be less and less. Google in search, Intel it processor fabs, ARM in power efficiency, Etc. During the time of fast growth it is a huge differentiator, and once that fast growth has been exhausted you need a different differentiator.