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Intel delays 10nm Cannon Lake processors, again, until late 2019
- AceJohnny2 8y agoIt used to be that Intel was undisputed king of the silicon race. It's kind of shocking that they've fallen so far behind. TSMC is already doing 7nm mass production right now: https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180622PD204.html https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180622PD204.html (arguably, what they call "7nm" isn't quite that, but still...)
- seiferteric 8y agoEvery single time an article comes up about this someone says this, and every single time someone refutes this saying that 7nm is a lie. Intel 10nm is supposed to be more dense than TSMC 7nm (if they ever get there).
- phire 8y agoThis fact keeps getting more and more exaggerated as time goes on. Yes, intel's 10nm absolutely smashes Samsung, GF and TSMC's 10nm processes. Yes Intel's 10nm should be very competitive/comparable with Samsung/GF/TSMC's 7nm processes. But all of the Intel 10nm metrics are slightly worse than the 7nm processes its now competing with. To cherrypick one metric as an example - * TSMC 10nm sram bitcell size: 0.042 µm² * Intel 10nm sram bitcell size: 0.031 µm² * TSMC 7nm sram bitcell size: 0.027 µm²
- gimmeThaBeet 8y agoThank you for actually showing feature size metrics, it has been a bit maddening to see people say 'you can compare them directly' but then I can't find a lot of comparisons about any kinds of features.
- redtuesday 8y agoIf you want that I recommend to look at semiwiki [0] and wikichip [1][2] [0] https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7343-leading-edge-logic-landscape-2018-a.html https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7343-leading-edge-log... [1] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/10_nm_lithography_process https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/10_nm_lithography_process [2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
- unwind 8y agoMeta: indenting is for code, and very hard to read on mobile.
- deepnotderp 8y agoTsmc "7nm" and Intel "10nm" are roughly identical. Intel random logic is a bit denser thanks to COAG, SDG and BEOL and TSMC SRAM is a decent bit denser, that's mostly it.
- deaddodo 8y agoNo, TSMC 7nm is slightly ahead of Intel 10nm. Not 3nm ahead, but still, better. Also, one exists and the other is a broken hunk of silicon. That's the most important metric.
- hinkley 8y agoThe consensus the last time there was a delay was that TSMC's 7nm process is roughly comparable to Intel's 10nm process. They're still ahead, but only until Intel finally ships 10nm. I'm not sure how much this affects the industry in general, but I bet there are some interesting Intel vs Arm discussions being fueled in Apple's product roadmap meetings.
- xenadu02 8y agoThis is still a massive change. Intel used to be 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else. Now they're slightly behind.
- hinkley 8y agoOh sure. I just like to be excited for the right reasons. If we've gone asymptotic, it makes me wonder what other companies will be able to field a chip that's 90% as good as Intel in the next decade...
- throwaway2048 8y agoTSMC hasn't shipped 7nm yet. Nor has actual production of chips began.
- ac29 8y agoHigh-volume production started in April: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12677/tsmc-kicks-off-volume-production-of-7nm-chips https://www.anandtech.com/show/12677/tsmc-kicks-off-volume-p... I don't believe a customer or customers have been announced publicly yet, but the rumour mill seems to think Apple's A12 will be one of the first to ship on TSMC 7nm.
- ksec 8y agoTrue, but if all goes according to plan TSMC will have 7nm producing and shipping any moment now and ready for iPhone in September.
- agumonkey 8y agoI think intel tried to go too deep at once thinking it had time to do so and now that others are reducing the distance bit by bit it looks like they're late
- Valmar 8y ago7 nm... 10 nm... all marketing bullshit, at the end of the day. Only way to know is compare the raw, different aspects of nodes.
- Fej 8y agoWhere does Intel get their codenames from?
- jandrese 8y agoNearby geological features.
- ttul 8y agoThey should name the next devices after Boring, OR
- ajuc 8y agoI believe Elon Musk has a trademark for that.
- martinpw 8y agoReason being that using names of such public landmarks avoids potential trademark infringement that might be triggered by almost any other names, given the number of trademarks in existence today.
- jandrese 8y agoTrademarks are domain specific, there aren't that many that they could infringe on. They could make Comet branded CPUs and unless they packaged them up in green cylinders there's no chance people would mistake them for the cleaner.
- martinpw 8y agoIntel are in more markets than just CPUs. And any time they enter a new market, all those trademarks from that market come into play. That's what I heard from the Intel folks that described the reasoning.
- deepnotderp 8y ago
- jandrese 8y agoAMD be like "C'mon Intel, you're making this too easy."
- JudasGoat 8y agoSmart phone profit paid the "lion share" of 7nm development. That makes AMD's selling of it's fabs look like a brilliant business move. At the time IIRC AMD sold them in desperation to stay afloat. So maybe just a "lucky" turn for AMD.
- mandelbulb 8y agoFrom the original article: >In the second-quarter results, Intel said that its 10-nanometer yields are "on track" with systems on the market in the second half of 2019. Krzanich's previous perspective wasn't specific on whether they would arrive in the first half of next year or in the second half. On the conference call with analysts on Thursday, Swan was more specific and said products would be on shelves in time for the holiday season. >Murthy Renduchintala, group president of the technology, systems architecture and client group, said on the call that the products that will become available in 2019 are client computing products, whereas products for data center use will come "shortly after." The stock fell further after those comments but later rebounded as executives talked about ongoing research and development for next-generation 7-nanometer technology.
- ksec 8y ago>Murthy Renduchintala, group president of the technology, systems architecture and client group, said on the call that the products that will become available in 2019 are client computing products, This sounds to me like Apple telling Intel. We plan to ship new MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro after 2019 Keynote. If you don't deliver we will kick all of Intel's product out of our roadmap. Including the modem business, which although offer no profits value but lots of investor are looking at it.
- joeblau 8y agoThe end is nigh Intel. Just like Apple switched to Intel Power PC’s were not upgrading, so will Apple switch to ARM.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- torgoguys 8y agoMacs aren't a huge percent of Intel's processor business. It's a big enough percent that they would miss it, but Apple's desktop and portable market share is still small. And then there are servers.
- kalleboo 8y agoTrue, but Apple releasing a truly desktop-class ARM into a MacBook might finally kick Qualcomm and PC laptop manufacturers into gear to releasing something that doesn't suck (like when Apple released a 64-bit ARM CPU and Qualcomm first made fun of it then quickly released their own)
- ajross 8y agoMacs are even a significant percent of Apple's processor business.
- danpalmer 8y agoThis is true, however Apple are probably the single most visible sales channel for Intel processors in the eyes of consumers. I’d expect this to have a much bigger impact in the markets because of the publicity of the change more than anything else.
- piinbinary 8y agoI wonder how cloud computing providers feel about this. On the one hand, competition between Intel and AMD for the cloud probably means cheaper chips for them. On the other hand, they were probably looking forward to the power savings from Intel's 10nm chips.
- gnusci 8y agoWell they have a lot of things to care of before to release the next CPU https://www.intel.ca/content/www/ca/en/support/articles/000025619/software.html https://www.intel.ca/content/www/ca/en/support/articles/0000... In particular security issues related to the IME: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
- throwaway77384 8y agoI hate that thing more than anything else in computing. Windows 10 spying pales in comparison to the theoretical capabilities of the ME. There was this brief campaign to try to get AMD to let users control or disable their ME equivalent, but it never went anywhere. I would kill for a modern computing platform without this crap built in. Soon forced DRM will go through it as well. It's absolutely shocking to see how much control people (and even companies) have surrendered to Intel. I'd recommend only buying libre / coreboot compatible hardware (or librem, or system76 systems) until users can gain more control over the Intel ME.
- davidovitch 8y agoIn the server/workstation space you can also opt in for an expensive Raptor Talos II system (but you'll get Power instead of x86). There is very little competition in the space for open/libre high end computer hardware systems.
- Zardoz84 8y agoFX8370 or FX93xx but the last gets very hot.
- snarfy 8y agoAnd AMD's stock is up $3
- darpa_escapee 8y agoKicking myself for getting out at $17. Oh well, it was a good run, I've been holding it since it was $4.
- syspec 8y agohumblebrag
- crunchlibrarian 8y agoIt's so strange how this is all playing out almost exactly like the Athlon XP days except with lots of cores and clouds.
- thinkythought 8y agoDoes anyone believe there's another core duo type massive leap out there to even be had this time around though? AMD is going to slowly pull a bit ahead of intel, especially in bang for buck, but i don't see how they can catch back up. As it is, last time intel jumped ahead it was by repackaging and souping up an a mobile arch that in and of itself was based on the old pentium 3 arch. They can't really mine the parts bin that way this time around either.
- bhouston 8y agoIf Intel goes multi-chip in the same package like Ryzen, then yeah, they can get more cores in, similar to Ryzen Threadripper. So there is a leap coming for Intel as well if they go that route, and after the massive success of Ryzen, they are likely going there. Just easier to scale core counts if you can use smaller dies and just use a lot of them with an interconnect fabric.
- xenadu02 8y agoIntel had two advantages: 1. Relentless process improvement, putting them 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else. 2. Using their monopoly to prevent OEMs from shipping AMD processors. #1 isn't true anymore. #2 is almost irrelevant since mobile has taken over and makes the PC revolution look like child's play by comparison. Intel doesn't have a good graphics story. They sell hot power-hungry chips. They no longer have a process advantage. Their monopoly in x86 is increasingly (but not yet completely) irrelevant. I'm sure they can ride the x86 profitability horse for at least 5-10 years. What then? Remember: RIM was profitable for several years after the iPhone was released. That didn't save them. Microsoft continued to rake in cash with Windows/Office as iOS/Android/AWS/GC established a new world order that threatened to make them irrelevant.
- rm999 8y agoIt's fun to dig up old predictions of where we'd be today. Here's an article from 2002: https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1176510 https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1176510 >Moore's Law scales to at least 9nm: technologist >It'll be at least a human generation before Moore's Law begins to run out of gas at around the 9nm and even then it may thrive, TSMC's chief technologist said Tuesday (March 12). Calvin Chenming Hu told an audience at the annual Semico Summit conference here that the 9nm node "can be ready more or less on time, in 2028 according to long-term forecasts or 2024 according to the 2002 (industry roadmap)." Intel is off by 4-5 years according to their initial estimates (in 2011) of hitting 10nm, but they are 5-10 years ahead of where TSMC thought we would be 15+ years ago. TSMC was manufacturing at 10nm last year, incidentally (Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835).
- acchow 8y agoIsn't comparing TSMC to Intel process nodes like comparing apples to oranges?
- garmaine 8y agoThey both manufacture silicon gates.. what does it matter if the production infrastructure on top is different.
- gameswithgo 8y agothe way they measure size is different
- garmaine 8y agoAh. What confused me was the word “process” which typically refers to the stack of things that take a high level description of a circuit and turn it into instructions for the machine to execute to make the wafer.
- MrEldritch 8y ago
- mepian 8y agoI wonder what Jim Keller has to say about this, wasn't he hired to oversee the introduction of the 10nm manufacturing process?
- kinghajj 8y agoI don't think so, Keller's specialty is microarchitecture, not semiconductor node processes.
- chx 8y agoNote this article is guessing and it's very likely they are guesssing wrong. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4190920-intel-intc-q2-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single https://seekingalpha.com/article/4190920-intel-intc-q2-2018-... what was actually said is this: > we continue to make progress on 10-nanometer. Yields are improving consistent with the timeline we shared in April, and we expect systems on shelves for the 2019 holiday season. This article guesses this to mean Cannon Lake. In reality, it almost surely means Ice Lake.
- redtuesday 8y agoThere are even rumors that Intel delayed the much more important Xeons to 2020, which could give AMD a 1 year head start with Zen2 on 7nm in the server space (comparable to Intels 10 nm). Copy paste from my posting yesterday: EDIT: it seems the twitter post got deleted. EDIT2: anandtech still has the pictures: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13119/intels-xeon-scalable-roadmap-leaks-cooper-lakesp-ice-lakesp-due-in-2020 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13119/intels-xeon-scalable-ro... > If the rumor [0] that Intel's first 10nm server chip will only release mid 2020 is true, then AMD's shares will probably skyrocket again if they truly can release their Zen 2 server CPU mid 2019 (on 7nm which is comparable to Intel's 10nm). [0] https://twitter.com/david_schor/status/1022142835989118977 https://twitter.com/david_schor/status/1022142835989118977
- lucian 8y agoThe secret behind 10nm technology: https://www.asml.com/press/press-releases/earnings-growth-continues-driven-by-strong-sales-across-full-product-portfolio-continued-euv-progress-enables-asml-roadmap-acceleration/en/s5869?rid=57342 https://www.asml.com/press/press-releases/earnings-growth-co... “Outlook For the third-quarter of 2018, ASML expects net sales between EUR 2.7 billion and EUR 2.8 billion, a gross margin between 47 percent and 48 percent. R&D costs of about EUR 395 million, SG&A costs of about EUR 120 million. Our target effective annualized tax rate is around 14 percent.”
- ksec 8y agoI don't believe ASML is holding up the Intel 10nm. It was a problem in Intel's own making. Their EUV equipment are mostly related Samsung 7nm, GF 7nm, and TSMC 7nm+.
- theshadowknows 8y agoCould someone ELI5 why smaller/denser feature size and layouts is the way we achieve higher and higher speeds? Is it mainly about efficiency and heat?
- rocqua 8y agoAs I heard, it is mostly about heat. However, there is also a distance component. It takes an electrical signal about 3 * 10^-9 seconds to cross 3cm, about the size of a CPU. That is roughly one clock tick on a 3GHz processor. Add in 'fill time' (you need some time for the voltage to build and stabilize) and moving signals across a CPU becomes a challenge. My speed calculations used the speed of a signal in a copper wire, not sure how the minute size and perhaps even angles of CPU wiring affect that.
- eecsninja 8y agoCry me a river. I'm still waiting for the day when our productivity scales with computing power (or node size). [1] Until then, the drive toward smaller/faster/whatever-other-superlatives CPU's is just people running on a hamster wheel. [1] https://foundersfund.com/the-future/#/artificial-intelligence-software https://foundersfund.com/the-future/#/artificial-intelligenc...