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Basically everyone but AMD and Apple is still on 12nm (or a similar density process) for scale production.

• mrweasel 7y ago
  This is still a little weird to me, given that AMD uses TSMC to make their chips. So isn't it TSMC who is capable of making sub- 12nm processors, or are TSMC depending on the AMD designs to be in a certain way? Failing everything else, Intel could pay TSMC to make a 7nm processor for them, no?
  • my123 7y ago
    Intel does use TSMC for some analog chip manufacturing and such. They even used their services for manufacturing SoFIA Intel Atom x86 CPUs previously. TSMC is a pure-play foundry which sells wafers to the whole industry. On 7nm, there's Samsung too making 7nm chips that are actually shipping (in the Note10(+)).
  • dralley 7y ago
    Yes, it's TSMC that is producing the chips, but only a few select companies get enough of a competitive advantage from bleeding edge nodes to be worth the extra cost and lower yields. Intel could do that in theory, but their CPU design is so closely tied to their manufacturing process that they would have to do a substantial redesign in order to do so.