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I would not be surprised if there was a lot of sunk cost fallacy on Intel's 10nm. They couldn't make it work effectively and it was so far behind that they bled

by Guthur 6y ago

I would not be surprised if there was a lot of sunk cost fallacy on Intel's 10nm. They couldn't make it work effectively and it was so far behind that they bled out most of their process leadership. But rather than pivot and reset they've just kept hammering away at it. Of course the decision would not be trivial to make; the lead time for a new process node is significant.

fshbbdssbbgdd 6y ago
Knowing very little about the subject... Is it plausible that they wouldn’t be able to get 10nm to work, but would be able to make 7nm work? Or put differently, would abandoning 10nm be tantamount to abandoning the effort to develop a smaller process?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Guthur 6y ago
  I am a very causal enthusiast but from my understanding there are many ways to skin a cat when it comes to process nodes hence with the company A 10nm vs company B 10nm are not equivalent. Intel somewhere along the line chose the wrong set of solutions to achieve their 10nm process. IMO these mistakes will not necessarily mean that some other node will be inherently disadvantaged other than the fact that they may now find themselves scrambling for tech lead. They will still have learned a lot from 10nm and hopefully should be able to feed that into future density improvements.
  - Hiopl 6y ago
    This far along into the crisis, it feels to me like it's clear that any technical issues are incidental. It seems like there are such dire internal cultural/management issues that will make it impossible to fix the technical ones in any acceptable timeframe.
    - Firehawke 6y ago
      Absolutely this. The technical issues exist because management made really bad decisions without having any sort of a backup plan. Complicating it further, Intel made the same mistake over and over again-- they've been trying to get things back on track since roughly Sandy Bridge and have replaced their head designer every chip since that point when things didn't go well. Instead of fixing their design, they throw it out and start completely over. Again. and. Again. It would require a miracle at the top to fix their decision process.
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  7 nm and 10 nm are quite different (7 nm relies more heavily on EUV IIRC), so the 10 nm delay doesn't have to affect 7 nm. However, 7nm is also facing significant delays.
brigade 6y ago
I read somewhere that the crunch to get 14nm fixed burned a lot of goodwill among their top engineers, and when they saw delays looming for 10nm as well they looked for greener pastures rather than go through the 14nm crunch again. But yeah, Intel’s leadership should have been making better fallback plans for 10nm and beyond from the moment they knew Broadwell would have to be delayed, all the way back in 2013.
toast0 6y ago
It's really a pipeline problem. You start the core design 2 or 3 years out, with the design rules you expect to be able to fab on. It's relatively easy to fab a 14nm design at 10nm if the 10nm fab shows up early, but it's hard and messy to take a 10nm design and fab it at 14nm if the 10nm isn't working so well. But when you're "close" to getting your 10nm fab working, it's hard to start a new design for 14nm. If their 7nm had shown up ready to go, that would have saved them, but it looks troubled too. Maybe they'll be able to work out the kinks faster on 7nm. Maybe they'll design something out of character for Intel that works for the realities of their 10nm process; from what I can tell, their 10nm process is mobile only because it doesn't clock well, they could turn that into a less negative by doing a design they normally couldn't do because of the need for high clockspeeds. It may look copycat of M1, but something that's a lot wider might be viable with a 3Ghz clock target, but isn't viable for 5Ghz that Intel needs to hit on desktop chips.

by Guthur 6y ago

fshbbdssbbgdd 6y ago

Knowing very little about the subject... Is it plausible that they wouldn’t be able to get 10nm to work, but would be able to make 7nm work? Or put differently, would abandoning 10nm be tantamount to abandoning the effort to develop a smaller process?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Guthur 6y ago
I am a very causal enthusiast but from my understanding there are many ways to skin a cat when it comes to process nodes hence with the company A 10nm vs company B 10nm are not equivalent. Intel somewhere along the line chose the wrong set of solutions to achieve their 10nm process. IMO these mistakes will not necessarily mean that some other node will be inherently disadvantaged other than the fact that they may now find themselves scrambling for tech lead. They will still have learned a lot from 10nm and hopefully should be able to feed that into future density improvements.
- Hiopl 6y ago
  This far along into the crisis, it feels to me like it's clear that any technical issues are incidental. It seems like there are such dire internal cultural/management issues that will make it impossible to fix the technical ones in any acceptable timeframe.
  - Firehawke 6y ago
    Absolutely this. The technical issues exist because management made really bad decisions without having any sort of a backup plan. Complicating it further, Intel made the same mistake over and over again-- they've been trying to get things back on track since roughly Sandy Bridge and have replaced their head designer every chip since that point when things didn't go well. Instead of fixing their design, they throw it out and start completely over. Again. and. Again. It would require a miracle at the top to fix their decision process.
0-_-0 6y ago
7 nm and 10 nm are quite different (7 nm relies more heavily on EUV IIRC), so the 10 nm delay doesn't have to affect 7 nm. However, 7nm is also facing significant delays.

brigade 6y ago

I read somewhere that the crunch to get 14nm fixed burned a lot of goodwill among their top engineers, and when they saw delays looming for 10nm as well they looked for greener pastures rather than go through the 14nm crunch again. But yeah, Intel’s leadership should have been making better fallback plans for 10nm and beyond from the moment they knew Broadwell would have to be delayed, all the way back in 2013.

toast0 6y ago

It's really a pipeline problem. You start the core design 2 or 3 years out, with the design rules you expect to be able to fab on. It's relatively easy to fab a 14nm design at 10nm if the 10nm fab shows up early, but it's hard and messy to take a 10nm design and fab it at 14nm if the 10nm isn't working so well. But when you're "close" to getting your 10nm fab working, it's hard to start a new design for 14nm. If their 7nm had shown up ready to go, that would have saved them, but it looks troubled too. Maybe they'll be able to work out the kinks faster on 7nm. Maybe they'll design something out of character for Intel that works for the realities of their 10nm process; from what I can tell, their 10nm process is mobile only because it doesn't clock well, they could turn that into a less negative by doing a design they normally couldn't do because of the need for high clockspeeds. It may look copycat of M1, but something that's a lot wider might be viable with a 3Ghz clock target, but isn't viable for 5Ghz that Intel needs to hit on desktop chips.