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It's a good analogy as long as Intel was the first to experience the end of Dennard scaling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling https://en.wikipedia.
by dfrage 7y ago
It's a good analogy as long as Intel was the first to experience the end of Dennard scaling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling) because their fab lines were ahead of the rest of the industry's. And fabs are all "semis", due to the massive amounts of capital and talent needed to move to the next node.
So much so that we're now we're down to two companies in the whole world who are successfully executing the smallest CPU nodes, unless Intel manages to make their "10nm" work, or pulls off their "7nm".
While we're hearing the very roughly equivalent TSMC "5nm" node is starting risk production (https://wccftech.com/tsmc-5nm-production-euv/ https://wccftech.com/tsmc-5nm-production-euv/ beta testing, you might say, someone outside of TSMC has to be the first, second, etc. to try to get real world dies that work on a new node). Intel isn't saying anything, but Semiaccurate has reported at least two fab lines that were slated to move to their 10nm are installing lots of EUV equipment consistent with using them for their 7nm node (and at least one fab moving back to 14nm).