- Base 10 nm production started in late 2018 has been improved in the meantime. Still does not appear viable for “full production” and “shipping for revenue” purposes.
- Upcoming SuperFin 10 nm nodes are “unquestionably far better than base 10nm. Better in just about every way. Yields are better (50+%), but still not as good at the 14 nm nodes.
- Cannon Lake (the first processors to be produced on the base 10 nm node launched 2 years ago) had yields lower than 25% even with iGPU disabled.
- The 10 nm capacity is far from handling an entire product stack.
- Even with SuperFin tech, the 10 nm production capacity may never match that of the 14 nm nodes.
- Backporting the upcoming Rocket Lake processors was not a good move: the new models ended up too big and are expected to be power hogs.
- 14nm shortage caused by the fact that Intel had to bloat up die sizes.
- “OEMs told they were to get a "small fraction" of orders of TGL. Improvements to yield won't fully help because no. of wafer starts is still low.”
5 replies (most recent on top)
problem solving: Naws Bob way
Amazing Kaizad Mistry is still employed by Intel .... Prime example of how accountability is dead at Intel.
It seems to me that Intel has always been very good at brute forcing every problem. Need to figure something out, just start a task force and ask for daily updates from as many people as possible until exhaustion.
This has always worked because everything was a nice and neat little problem that didn't require much thought or skill.
Now enter everything 22nm and beyond, where more skill and thought has been required, and brute force is not enough. For all of these problems it seems to me intel always struggles, and has major capability concerns.
How did intel go from leadership of one generation ahead at 22nm to utter FUBAR of bigger and bigger scale at 10 and 7?
They out spent on RD had leadership changes everywhere from BOD /CEO down to TMG yet execution continues to fail.
Money, leadership, reorg , all of it failed
The rot is wide and deep, personally think this is going to end up with a very public faceplant
10nm is the Moby D*ck to Intel's Captain Ahab.