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Wow, this sounds like jingoistic, revisionist history. I don't claim to know the details but I certainly don't trust this article to be objective. One alternat

Wow, this sounds like jingoistic, revisionist history. I don't claim to know the details but I certainly don't trust this article to be objective. One alternate theory I've heard is that Intel bet big either keeping the feature size it was (7nm?) or on a process that was less speculative and risky than the process that ultimately got put in place to make sub 7nm chips a reality now. In other words they failed to innovate. The demand for chips has only increased, even if the article is suggesting that "PC sales are down". Moore's law has kept pace even if CPUs have been stagnant (hint: s/C/G/).

adrian_b 4y ago
Intel's problems have been much greater than "failing to innovate". During many years, it looks like the Intel CPU design teams have been designing for imaginary manufacturing processes, which have never been implemented. The Cannon Lake and Ice Lake CPU generations must have been designed for such imaginary processes, because if the parameters of the processes that have been actually used for their fabrication would have been known in advance, those projects would have been canceled already some years before their finalization (because the first 2 versions of the Intel 10 nm process have been much worse than their old 14 nm process, so they should have never been used in commercial products and no manufacturing plants should have been converted for them), saving a lot of money. Only with the manufacturing process used for Tiger Lake, starting in Q4 2020, Intel has restored the appearance of being able to predict how their designs will work. During the years 2015 to 2019, when Cannon Lake and Ice Lake have been designed, someone from those in charge with the developing the Intel manufacturing processes must have told continuously lies to the other divisions about what parameters will be true for their future manufacturing process. Some of those lies have also been told in public, because Intel has published a few presentations about their 10 nm process, which supposedly worked perfectly. There is a very large difference between just being unable to find a way to improve a manufacturing process and claiming that the process that will be available next year will have a certain set of improved parameters, despite knowing that you do not have the foggiest idea about how such parameters might be achieved, and making thus the company spend many billions for developing products based on the fake set of parameters and for converting manufacturing plants to implement the fake manufacturing processes. I wonder if it will ever be known who were those guilty of Intel's problems, because they have caused losses of many billions, while in other places someone who causes losses of a few thousands might be fired immediately.
- n7pdx 4y ago
  There’s another side to the Intel 10nm process debacle. Intel designers and architects have relied on a process and manufacturing advantage for years to overwhelm any problems they had. One of the consequences is the death of any kind of post-mortem accountability: if your product is guaranteed to make billions of dollars no matter what, why point any fingers? Management basked in the money stream. Engineers who toed the line were promoted up. Dissenters were beaten down. This toxic environment might still be going on now if Intel maintained their process advantage… the 10nm debacle exposed the design/arch teams: their people-manager emperors had no clothes.

adrian_b 4y ago

Intel's problems have been much greater than "failing to innovate". During many years, it looks like the Intel CPU design teams have been designing for imaginary manufacturing processes, which have never been implemented. The Cannon Lake and Ice Lake CPU generations must have been designed for such imaginary processes, because if the parameters of the processes that have been actually used for their fabrication would have been known in advance, those projects would have been canceled already some years before their finalization (because the first 2 versions of the Intel 10 nm process have been much worse than their old 14 nm process, so they should have never been used in commercial products and no manufacturing plants should have been converted for them), saving a lot of money. Only with the manufacturing process used for Tiger Lake, starting in Q4 2020, Intel has restored the appearance of being able to predict how their designs will work. During the years 2015 to 2019, when Cannon Lake and Ice Lake have been designed, someone from those in charge with the developing the Intel manufacturing processes must have told continuously lies to the other divisions about what parameters will be true for their future manufacturing process. Some of those lies have also been told in public, because Intel has published a few presentations about their 10 nm process, which supposedly worked perfectly. There is a very large difference between just being unable to find a way to improve a manufacturing process and claiming that the process that will be available next year will have a certain set of improved parameters, despite knowing that you do not have the foggiest idea about how such parameters might be achieved, and making thus the company spend many billions for developing products based on the fake set of parameters and for converting manufacturing plants to implement the fake manufacturing processes. I wonder if it will ever be known who were those guilty of Intel's problems, because they have caused losses of many billions, while in other places someone who causes losses of a few thousands might be fired immediately.

n7pdx 4y ago
There’s another side to the Intel 10nm process debacle. Intel designers and architects have relied on a process and manufacturing advantage for years to overwhelm any problems they had. One of the consequences is the death of any kind of post-mortem accountability: if your product is guaranteed to make billions of dollars no matter what, why point any fingers? Management basked in the money stream. Engineers who toed the line were promoted up. Dissenters were beaten down. This toxic environment might still be going on now if Intel maintained their process advantage… the 10nm debacle exposed the design/arch teams: their people-manager emperors had no clothes.