Friday, January 22nd 2021
Intel Has Fixed its 7 nm Node, But Outsourcing is Still Going to Happen
Intel has today reported its Q4 2020 earnings disclosing full-year revenue with the current CEO Bob Swan, upcoming new CEO Pat Gelsinger, and Omar Ishrak, Chairman of Intel's board. During the call, company officials have talked about Intel's earnings and most importantly, addressing the current problems about the company's manufacturing part - semiconductor foundries. Incoming Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has talked about the state of the 7 nm node, giving shareholders reassurance and a will to remain in such a position. He has made an argument that he has personally reviewed the progress of the "health and recovery of the 7 nm program."
The 7 nm node has been originally delayed by a full year amid the expectations, and as with the 10 nm node, we have believed that it is going to experience similar issues. However, the incoming CEO has reassured everyone that it is very much improving. The new 7 nm node is on track for 2023 delivery, when Intel is expected to compete with the 3 nm node of TSMC. Firstly, Intel will make a debut of the 7 nm node with client processors scheduled for 1H 2023 arrival, with data center models following that. The company leads have confirmed that Intel will stay true to its internal manufacturing, but have stressed that there will still be a need for some outsourcing to happen.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
The 7 nm node has been originally delayed by a full year amid the expectations, and as with the 10 nm node, we have believed that it is going to experience similar issues. However, the incoming CEO has reassured everyone that it is very much improving. The new 7 nm node is on track for 2023 delivery, when Intel is expected to compete with the 3 nm node of TSMC. Firstly, Intel will make a debut of the 7 nm node with client processors scheduled for 1H 2023 arrival, with data center models following that. The company leads have confirmed that Intel will stay true to its internal manufacturing, but have stressed that there will still be a need for some outsourcing to happen.
65 Comments on Intel Has Fixed its 7 nm Node, But Outsourcing is Still Going to Happen
Sure, if you compare PC cpu's only then Amd might be at a disadvantage, from what you say AMD beat Intel with whatever scraps TSMC can provide after they satisfy Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm and so on.
I don't care about Intel vs Amd, powerful cpu's get more irrelevant by the day, i was gonna upgrade to a 3950x or better but latest Adobe suite got so well optimized for GPU that CPU sits almost IDLE.
CPU for productivity in video editing is dead and photo editing is moving fast to replace the cpu, other software that i don't use is also heavy on the gpu like blender and the likes.
Most of their 10nm parts have been... meh at best? Their first 10nm parts weren't power efficient, nor did they perform well.
I guess they're going to have to prove that they can produce either power efficient or high performance parts this year, as otherwise all the claims of Intel having a good 10nm processes that's competitive is just going to be hot air.
Samsung is equally getting crap for their process being poor, yet there doesn't seem to be any overwhelming proof of such, beyond possibly the shortage of Nvidia GPUs. However, the actual GPUs doesn't seem to underperform, although they seem to be running a tad hot.
I don't see what TSMC can't match, they're already making 5nm part for Apple in large(?) volumes, a mere three years ahead of Intel's 7nm schedule. Will Intel deliver 7nm on time, just as they did with 10nm? :rolleyes:
There's way too much speculation as to what is what, but yes, you are correct with regards to competition for 5nm capacity from TSMC, it's going to be in tight supply for this year and most likely next year. If this is going to be a problem for AMD or not, I guess we'll have to wait and see. There's possibly a chance for them to use the 6nm node as a step for now.
Do you have any inside info on what AMD is planning next, as all the roadmaps I have seen suggests that AMD is only planning for 5nm in 2022. I guess at least that makes your statement correct, we won't see 5nm x86 chips until 2022. What danger is in having the fabs in Taiwan or South Korea? Are we talking earth quakes, typhoons or invasion by China or North Korea? Beyond that I can't think of any reasons why it would be dangerous, unless you're worried about the US falling behind in chip manufacturing tech.
If you are talking about 7nm, that's based on Intels statements that 7nm density is between 200MT/mm2 and 240MT/mm2, which is higher density than TSMCs stated ~175MT/mm2.
Also, Intel uses a flip flop and a logic gate to measure transistor density - most of the others do not state their method of measuring, so they could use an SRAM circuit which is smaller. This is why you have Samsung "8nm" at a 58 MT/mm2 density while "Intel 10nm" and "TSMC 7nm" are both around 95MT/mm2. "Nanometers" are meaningless. Intel Tiger Lake (10nm) destroys similar Zen 2 laptop parts on single core, and its Xe is far better. Its also near desktop Zen 3 performance in single core. I suppose you think Zen 3 is meh as well. I agree with that, and I actually don't think that the node is as important as many think it is. Node size has a lot more to do with production efficiency. We've had extremely powerful large CPUs in the midrange market on GloFlo 14nm for years now, they are just expensive to make. Seems like everyone failed to comprehend the ***x86*** qualifier of my post.
To spoon feed it - AMD is no threat because AMD has limited access to nodes beyond 7nm, and Intel already has a match for 7nm. I think the current market already indicates it's a problem for AMD. Zen 3 and RDNA2 are not volume shipping components. If they were, then indeed Intel would be in trouble. Instead of Zen 3 and RDNA 2, AMDs limited contract capacity with TSMC seems to be tied up with Xbox / PS5.
I expect AMDs Q4 earnings to reveal a big jump in "embedded" aka Xbox/PS5 market, with much more muted and possibly negative growth in laptop/desktop chips as well as GPUs. This all has to do with production allocation, not benchmarks. There have been a number of articles and constant speculation on the forums about AMD doing Zen 4 launch in late 2021. Not inside info just being aware of what the media is saying -
www.techradar.com/news/amds-5nm-zen-4-cpus-could-arrive-in-2021-really-turning-the-heat-up-on-intel
hothardware.com/news/amd-zen-4-cpus-on-track-for-2021-tsmc-5nm
www.tweaktown.com/news/69159/amd-zen-4-arrive-2021-tsmc-5nm-shows-promising-yields/index.html
"Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has talked about the state of the 10 nm node, giving shareholders reassurance and a will to remain in such a position. He has made an argument that he has personally reviewed the progress of the "health and recovery of the 10 nm program"
:D
So AMD at some point in the future if need arises just needs to make a monolithic CPU and Intel is fuc...ed, for a while of course.
And even that is only if Intel sticks to 2023 this time which I won't be holding my breath for.
Official Intel slide:
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