Friday, July 27th 2018
Intel Stuck with 14nm Processors Till Holiday 2019
Wrap your head around this: at some point in 2019, AMD will be selling 7 nm processors while Intel sells 14 nm processors. That how grim Intel's 10 nanometer silicon fabrication process development is looking. In the Q&A session of its Q2-2018 Earnings Call, Intel stated that the first products based on its 10 nm process will arrive only by Holiday 2019, making 14 nm micro-architectures hold the fort for not just the rest of 2018, but also most of 2019. In the client-segment, Intel is on the verge of launching its 9th generation Core "Whiskey Lake" processor family, its 5th micro-architecture on the 14 nm node after "Broadwell," "Skylake," "Kaby Lake," and "Coffee Lake."
It's likely that "Whiskey Lake" will take Intel into 2019 after the company establishes performance leadership over 12 nm AMD "Pinnacle Ridge" with a new round of core-count increases. Intel is also squeezing out competitiveness in its HEDT segment by launching new 20-core and 22-core LGA2066 processors; and a new platform with up to 28 cores and broader memory interface. AMD, meanwhile, hopes to have the first 7 nm EPYC processors out by late-2018. Client-segment products based on its architecture, however, will follow the roll-out of these enterprise parts. We could see a point in 2019 when AMD launches its 7 nm 3rd generation Ryzen processors in the absence of competing 10 nm Core processors from Intel. Posted below is an Intel slide from 2013, when the company was expecting 10 nm rollout by 2015. That's how much its plans have derailed.
It's likely that "Whiskey Lake" will take Intel into 2019 after the company establishes performance leadership over 12 nm AMD "Pinnacle Ridge" with a new round of core-count increases. Intel is also squeezing out competitiveness in its HEDT segment by launching new 20-core and 22-core LGA2066 processors; and a new platform with up to 28 cores and broader memory interface. AMD, meanwhile, hopes to have the first 7 nm EPYC processors out by late-2018. Client-segment products based on its architecture, however, will follow the roll-out of these enterprise parts. We could see a point in 2019 when AMD launches its 7 nm 3rd generation Ryzen processors in the absence of competing 10 nm Core processors from Intel. Posted below is an Intel slide from 2013, when the company was expecting 10 nm rollout by 2015. That's how much its plans have derailed.
72 Comments on Intel Stuck with 14nm Processors Till Holiday 2019
Is that the 13th month for those of us not in the U.S.?
I think up to 2016/2017 they wanted to do 10nm on "tweaked" old technology (it's cost effective method, never failed so far) - it failed this time.
Now they are using EUV lithography (expensive AF, also tweaking takes A VERY long time because it's new technology - it was never used to mass produce high perf. CPU dies).
They made laptop chips so far, however I bet 4,5GHz+ clock is giving them a hard time :)
Why clock is important ?
Because launching a CPU with slower per thread performance than last gen is not something Intel wants to do. I think they ran out of ideas for great IPC gains, and AMD is catching up too fast for them to respond effieciently.
Well it may be easter holidays too.
But then might also be summer holidays.
Or it could be christma holidays.
I bet there are more holidays for the various religions and nations out there.
But you could be correct. It may be a 13th month we didn't know about.
Even so its not like Intel suddenly cannot compete when AMD puts out product on 7nm. Their 14nm isn't thát far off to make it obsolete. They are going to have to play the pricing game.
like Spectre and Meltdown ( AND THOSE THAT INTEL HAVE NOT DISCLOSED).
WE ALL KNOW that Intel have to rework upcoming CPU's to mitigate those flaws found in all Current designs
Especially as AMD confirmed that Zen2 will be fabbed at TSMC..
Now with this delay Intel is going to have problems where it will hurt the most the Server and HEDT market. I'm sorry I can't see a 14nm chip competing against AMD's 7nm Zen2 and Zen3 because be honest the late 2019 release of 10nm chips along with the statement that these will be desktop and client only means that there is no 10nm hedt or server chips in 2019. So those will likely be 2020 but when in 2020. AMD will have Zen 3 based 7nm+ chips out at that time which seems like Intel will be competing with their 14nm chips. This is a joke and if investors are seeing this then that is probably why they are jumping ship and rightfully so. Intel needs a chiplet design if they are going to compete again and that likely won't happen until 2022 at the earliest if they started shortly after Jim Keller got hired. They will be hurting for the foreseeable future.
Another thing about this situation though is that due to AMD's chiplet design their cost's and release timeframes are considerably condensed compared to Intel. AMD only needs two chips designs one an APU the other a pure CPU. This allows AMD to reduce costs due to reduced defect rates and make it easier to obtain higher clocked Server/HEDT chips early on in newer processes while Intel has to wait for process maturity to reach a high point for the release of their Monolithic dies.
Either way we will see in 2020, but if my feelings are correct next year will be the start for year's of hurt for Intel, I just hope this time that AMD comes out of it better than they did when they were selling their Opteron's. And right now it seems they likely will as the OEM's don't seem to be acting like they have been payed off by Intel this time around.
Intel's leaked server roadmap -> www.anandtech.com/show/13119/intels-xeon-scalable-roadmap-leaks-cooper-lakesp-ice-lakesp-due-in-2020
Okay so when we say 10nm or 7nm what are we talking about?
Are we talking minimum feature size only and if so, why only that?
Here is a simple comparison for us all.
Intel 14nm vs Samsung 14nm (all in nm where lower is generally better)
(both Fin-Fet; Intel was first to market with these chips long before any other company was considering high density logic silicon on fin-fet)
Fin Pitch: 42nm vs 49nm
Fin Height: 42nm vs 39nm
Gate Pitch: 70nm vs 78nm
MMP: 52nm vs 67nm
So once again what are we talking about here as just saying 14,12,10,7nm says nothing.
Global Foundries 12nm processes is inferior to the above 14nm processes by all accounts save for the minimum feature size which is the magical 12nm which we obsess over.
Unless anyone here knows the ins and outs of Global Foundries 7nm* node then you can't compare and say who is ahead of what.
More over the obsession with the node as if it means anything directly is laughable as it clearly illustrates that a technical discussion is being had by people who aren't technical in the least and it ends up being conjecture based on little to zero knowledge. It's surprising that those that know better even in this very thread, do not say anything to correct this.
Look at the TDP for the 8-core Core i7 9900K. It's still 95W with two more cores and a higher clock speed and of course more cache (as compared to the 8700K). So if Intel can hit these performance targets on the same process, same TDP, why exactly is it so pressing for us end users to have a new process? The performance gains due to a smaller node are not always the same and many times are negligible depending on what else changes with the process. Straight optical shrinks rarely do anything at all for performance. Intel isn't Stuck* it's called engineering. Overcoming the difficulty is the engineering, which they pour billions of dollars and man hours into.
The expectationally shallow appreciation and conversation around deep and detailed engineering/physics phenomenon is quite perplexing.
It's okay to dislike and even loath Intel based on their business practices, but if you're going to engage their products from a technical perspective, let's be sure we know what we are talking about or at the very least cognisant of how little we know before we type.
Good lord by the time Intel has a true high performance 10nm product, AMD will be on 7nm+! Hopefully Intel can compete again by 2021, or AMD will stat price gouging hard. There's nothing they CAN DO after they launch the 8/16 "i9" @ 5GHz. That's their last hurrah for 2 years.
New architectures take time to make, and they can't even really nail one down until they get 10nm working.