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Is there any reputable reporting, or even just wild gossip, about why Intel is behind? The cynical answer is “they were focused on profit margins and didn’t in

Is there any reputable reporting, or even just wild gossip, about why Intel is behind? The cynical answer is “they were focused on profit margins and didn’t invest in process”, but is it possible they bet hard on some technology that didn’t pan out? Ultraviolet lithography? Some exotic indium gallium arsenide magic that didn’t work in mass production?

wtallis 6y ago
There seems to be consensus about their 10nm failures: they were trying every trick in the book except switching to EUV lithography, betting that they could get ahead and stay ahead while EUV power levels creeped upward toward what's needed for volume manufacturing. But Intel bit off more than they could chew and ended up with a process that simply didn't work (cf. the disabled iGPU on Cannonlake). So Intel scaled back their ambitions and spent more time working out the kinks, and they're apparently still a year away from having a 10nm desktop CPU. I'm not sure if we have any good clues as to what's going wrong with Intel's 7nm efforts, but it seems reasonable to guess that they weren't putting as much effort as their competitors into getting ready for EUV. And given how long Intel's had these issues at this point, it seems pretty clear that they have some broader management issues.
Symmetry 6y ago
Well, SemiAccurate made some claims about some of the cultural problems Intel was having a bit ago. https://semiaccurate.com/2018/06/29/intels-firing-of-ceo-brian-krzanich-is-a-cover-for-deeper-problems/ https://semiaccurate.com/2018/06/29/intels-firing-of-ceo-bri... With regards to the specific technologies Intel was trying to do a lot of new things with 10nm. Initial rumors said that replacing copper with cobalt in some of the metal layers was causing problems. But later rumors were that Contact Over Active Gate (COAG) used mostly in the GPU section of a chip was the main culprit and why none of the early 10nm parts had working GPUs.

wtallis 6y ago

There seems to be consensus about their 10nm failures: they were trying every trick in the book except switching to EUV lithography, betting that they could get ahead and stay ahead while EUV power levels creeped upward toward what's needed for volume manufacturing. But Intel bit off more than they could chew and ended up with a process that simply didn't work (cf. the disabled iGPU on Cannonlake). So Intel scaled back their ambitions and spent more time working out the kinks, and they're apparently still a year away from having a 10nm desktop CPU. I'm not sure if we have any good clues as to what's going wrong with Intel's 7nm efforts, but it seems reasonable to guess that they weren't putting as much effort as their competitors into getting ready for EUV. And given how long Intel's had these issues at this point, it seems pretty clear that they have some broader management issues.

Symmetry 6y ago

Well, SemiAccurate made some claims about some of the cultural problems Intel was having a bit ago. https://semiaccurate.com/2018/06/29/intels-firing-of-ceo-brian-krzanich-is-a-cover-for-deeper-problems/ https://semiaccurate.com/2018/06/29/intels-firing-of-ceo-bri... With regards to the specific technologies Intel was trying to do a lot of new things with 10nm. Initial rumors said that replacing copper with cobalt in some of the metal layers was causing problems. But later rumors were that Contact Over Active Gate (COAG) used mostly in the GPU section of a chip was the main culprit and why none of the early 10nm parts had working GPUs.