Monday, October 14th 2019
Intel Scraps 10nm for Desktop, Brazen it Out with 14nm Skylake Till 2022?
In a shocking piece of news, Intel has reportedly scrapped plans to launch its 10 nm "Ice Lake" microarchitecture on the client desktop platform. The company will confine its 10 nm microarchitectures, "Ice Lake" and "Tiger Lake" to only the mobile platform, while the desktop platform will see derivatives of "Skylake" hold Intel's fort under the year 2022! Intel gambles that with HyperThreading enabled across the board and increased clock-speeds, it can restore competitiveness with AMD's 7 nm "Zen 2" Ryzen processors with its "Comet Lake" silicon that offers core-counts of up to 10.
"Comet Lake" will be succeeded in 2021 by the 14 nm "Rocket Lake" silicon, which somehow combines a Gen12 iGPU with "Skylake" derived CPU cores, and possibly increased core-counts and clock speeds over "Comet Lake." It's only 2022 that Intel will ship out a truly new microarchitecture on the desktop platform, with "Meteor Lake." This chip will be built on Intel's swanky 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication node, and possibly integrate CPU cores more advanced than even "Willow Cove," possibly "Golden Cove."
The HardwareLuxx article making these explosive revelations attributes the sudden change in Intel's plans to the company not being able to scale clock-speeds of "Ice Lake" high enough to establish product leadership. It feels "Skylake," which has IPC parity with "Zen 2," has enough scalability and clock-speed headroom to stay competitive with AMD at high clock-speeds. The company will augment next-generation uncore (revamped memory controllers, support for PCIe gen 4.0, Gen12 iGPU, etc.), with "Skylake" CPU cores, over time. Other areas where Intel could grow its mainstream desktop silicon is cache rebalancing similar to its HEDT chips, and implementing the Mesh Interconnect to maintain low latencies as core-counts enter two-figures.
Interestingly, 10 nm "Ice Lake" remains on Intel's enterprise roadmap, where the company appears more desperate not to cede market-share to AMD, especially as businesses around the world set their 5G plans rolling, springing a cycle of hardware updates in the data-center. 2020 could see the introduction of Xeon Scalable processors based on 10 nm "Ice Lake" microarchitecture with "Sunny Cove" CPU cores. In 2021, the company will introduce the "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon processor with even more cores and larger I/O connectivity, spearheaded with PCI-Express gen 5.0.
Update Oct 15th: Intel has released a statement, denying these claims, read more here.
Source:
HardwareLuxx.de
"Comet Lake" will be succeeded in 2021 by the 14 nm "Rocket Lake" silicon, which somehow combines a Gen12 iGPU with "Skylake" derived CPU cores, and possibly increased core-counts and clock speeds over "Comet Lake." It's only 2022 that Intel will ship out a truly new microarchitecture on the desktop platform, with "Meteor Lake." This chip will be built on Intel's swanky 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication node, and possibly integrate CPU cores more advanced than even "Willow Cove," possibly "Golden Cove."
Interestingly, 10 nm "Ice Lake" remains on Intel's enterprise roadmap, where the company appears more desperate not to cede market-share to AMD, especially as businesses around the world set their 5G plans rolling, springing a cycle of hardware updates in the data-center. 2020 could see the introduction of Xeon Scalable processors based on 10 nm "Ice Lake" microarchitecture with "Sunny Cove" CPU cores. In 2021, the company will introduce the "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon processor with even more cores and larger I/O connectivity, spearheaded with PCI-Express gen 5.0.
Update Oct 15th: Intel has released a statement, denying these claims, read more here.
148 Comments on Intel Scraps 10nm for Desktop, Brazen it Out with 14nm Skylake Till 2022?
Not sure what's coming next, maybe they'll change their mind and keep it for another gen. It's hard to believe, but starting w/ Bristol Ridge we are already past a 3-year mark. If EOL will be extended by another 3 years, sAM4 will beat LGA775 in terms of longevity.
Putting things off until 2022 to even release another desktop arch?
Yeah, right........
You don't innovate you don't compete, it's that simple and Intel just isn't getting it done. Intel right now is in a deep hole and it's getting really dim down there, they say 2022 and that's a bad sign. Things can change, no doubt but as things are now I don't see that changing anytime soon.
AMD has them by the proverbial nads and they know it.
videocardz.com/75217/amd-ryzen-2018-2020-roadmap-leaked-castle-peak-matisse-picasso-vermeer-and-renoir
www.pcgameshardware.de/CPU-CPU-154106/Specials/Roadmap-CPUs-Prozessoren-Liste-AMD-Intel-1130335/
Someone better call AMD and tell them.
more money saved
If supposed Zen 3 (Ryzen-4000 series I mean) actually manages to launch next year and actually is on AM4, it'll be simply a 7nm+ refresh of Zen2 with minimal changes and hopefully a slight clock boost.
I also do hope that AMD changes their mind and prolongs sAM4 EOL by another few years, but they did give us a heads-up many moons ago and they did officially repeat this EOL statement on many occasions, including this year.
Maybe they'll try to yank 14 gens out of 14nm now, just for the cohesion, I mean why not.Well, paper launch is a real thing, right - but its still a launch. And that is an important nuance I think @silentbogo is overlooking here.
Definitely something other than 'an announcement' or 'a press release' like we've seen daily from Intel :D
And every year, the low-power optimized 10nm offering would turn more and more ridiculous. I mean who wants a low clocked low power chip that does worse but saves people 10 minutes of battery time? And also in marketing, how do you explain shedding as much as 25% of your clockspeeds to a simpleton? From AMD we accepted it because FX was so shit at 5Ghz and we had a decade to come to terms with it... though even for Zen, the main complaint was clockspeed limitations in the consumer segment!
The 2 important platforms: servers and mobile get 10nm.
Desktops stay on 14nm.
IMO this was quite obvious from the start. We knew the new node will be problematic and not all segments will get it.
It shouldn't be a huge problem. Realistically, Intel will be able to make competitive 14nm CPUs up to 8 cores, so the mainstream is covered (office/home desktops). The high-end stuff that can benefit from 7/10nm is so small Intel just doesn't bother.
It could have been different if they were able to ask the prices they used to. AMD aggressive pricing means the margins are down and high-end desktops aren't attractive anymore.
What this will mean is: AMD will rule in this segment and likely increase their prices.
Zen 3 is expected to offer the same boost in performance that Zen 2 did over Zen/Zen+, but you're free to believe otherwise.
So far, AMD has delivered and there's no reason to doubt that they'll not continue to do so for at least a little while longer.
I remember the Roadmap from 2 years ago : "it's ok, we're finishing the process in 10nm, and going further".
Then they got short on stock due their inability to provide laptops to businesses.
And know they totally flushed Desktop.
So, AMD is already crushing on Desktop market, and they will start to attack on Mobile since they have no real opposition in Desktop (Zen 3 is on the rails).
At this point there aren't even sensible leaks about Zen 3. It's all just hopes and sarcasm - depending on which side of bed you prefer.In the 10% market share their able to cover with TSMC supply. :)Mobile segment means laptops.