Intel kills off the 10nm process?

https://semiaccurate.com/2018/10/22/intel-kills-off-the-10nm-process/

192 102 8 years ago

kristianp• 8 years ago

Does this mean they'll skip to 7nm? I don't believe it.

throwaway20483• 8 years ago

Process node-size names are more or less semantic marketing games these days anyways. What TSMC calls 7nm is roughly equivalent to what Intel called 10nm.

Its likely that Intel will roll out a node at that size, but being forced to abandon their previous attempt is a crushing blow that has set them back years, and will likely set them back years more to come.

It takes years to develop a node size, and they have had to throw out most of their work.

warmwaffles• 8 years ago

Pressure from AMD Ryzen is real. Exciting to see this happening again.

gambiting2• 8 years ago

Yeah, no kidding. The king of the kings, the 9900K, is only marginally faster than the 2700X in almost every benchmark, with the 2700X being a lot cheaper. If I was building a PC today I would pick AMD without any hesitation.

tfha3• 8 years ago

Most likely it does. They've been taking about skipping 10nm altogether for over a year now.

Qub3d• 8 years ago

They've talked about skipping it since 2012: https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4?t=3072

philipdestroyer• 8 years ago

Can someone who has access tell us what information the paywalled article is using to make this claim? EDIT: an r/hardware post is claiming the article is based on anonymous sources that the author knows at Intel. The article claims Intel is abandoning the 10nm roadmap --> no Icelake 10nm+? Intel also had some issues with 14nm which is why Broadwell-S and Broadwell came out at the same time. Whatever the case, Intel will probably have to respond to this.

bhouston• 8 years ago

Why couldn't Intel get this working with other fabs could? Hubris, lack of talent or really bad decisions?

iamdead• 8 years ago

From what I understand, Intel's 10nm process is roughly the same as 7nm processes from other foundries, and Intel's 14nm is more or less 10nm on someone else's scale.

maccio92• 8 years ago

I see this argument presented over and over and over again but never any supporting information to prove that claim.

zamadatix• 8 years ago

I think Intel is starting to fall behind a bit but perhaps not as much as it sounds from the headline, remember their "10 nm" process had better actual sizing numbers than what some were calling their "7 nm" process. That they failed to only come out a little ahead is a big problem for them but it's not like they failed to come out a generation behind.

agumonkey• 8 years ago

Neither, most probably a side effect of starting before the others, when research wasn't finished, so they dug themselves into a problem too deep to be commercially viable while other were growing on smaller parts of the market. Now that EUV is polished and stable, competition can just jump on the bandwagon while intel has to kill its old pipeline.

jcranmer• 8 years ago

My understanding is that what Intel targeted for 10nm was very ambitious, so much so that it beats out what TSMC calls 7nm. In other words, other fabs haven't gotten it working yet either.

Process node names have been detached from the reality of corresponding to specific feature sizes. It's up to the companies to figure out what performance they want to label 10nm versus 7nm, and Intel's processes have generally been more aggressive than the others. What's changed is that Intel has gone from unreachably ahead to merely in the competition.

tfha3• 8 years ago

Other fabs couldn't either. Intel 10nm depended highly on EUV, the only working 7nm (TSMC) doesn't use EUV at all yet. The first EUV fab will be much better than any existing one today, and it still seems like Intel will claim that prize.

Though, tsmc certainly isn't letting them have it for free.

uluyol• 8 years ago

I believe Samsung is using EUV now https://www.anandtech.com/show/13496/samsung-starts-mass-pro...

lettergram• 8 years ago

I'm thinking this is not true. This is the core of Intel's business, I'd be shocked if they decided to kill it off. They may miss a deadline, maybe two - however if they want to survive as the behemoth they are today, they'll have to deliver.

dmm• 8 years ago

I think the idea is that they will eventually create something called 10nm but it will be very different from the current process in development.

opencl3• 8 years ago

They've already missed at least two 10nm deadlines.

tfha3• 8 years ago

Intel is still working on 7nm. That will be their next big play.

mtgx• 8 years ago

They may miss a deadline, maybe two

They've missed like at least 3 already. 10nm was supposed to be ready in the second half of 2015. Now their most optimistic schedule is late 2019.

jaxtellerSoA2• 8 years ago

They may miss a deadline, maybe two

Too late for that, more like missing 5 deadlines at this point. 10nm at Intel is a disaster, I am not surprised they would scrap the whole thing.

bitL• 8 years ago

If this is true, then we will likely see MacBooks with 7nm A12+ in 2019 or 2020. They might surpass Intel on raw performance if TSMC's 7nm process is good (and Apple paid a lot of its R&D costs).

make32• 8 years ago

aren't the A series ARM chips? Windows has had quite a bit of difficulty getting regular desktop stuff to work on ARM (x86 emulation is slow)

jeffbax• 8 years ago

Mac OS is not Windows :) Apple's never shied away from migrating platforms when they deem it useful, and having things running in a secret lab for years.

wlesieutre• 8 years ago

The first Intel powered Macs shipped in early 2006 with 10.4.4, but Intel compatible builds of OS X date back to 2001/2002 internally.

https://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/10/a-bit-of-history-behind...

A lot of the guts are shared with iOS, which runs natively on those chips already. I think it's safe to assume they have internal macOS builds running on their A series processors as well. They've probably been testing that for years now.

flohofwoe• 8 years ago

I bet that Apple won't rely that much on emulation this time (like back when switching from PPC to x86), instead either require app-store apps to be uploaded as LLVM bitcode, or upload fat-binaries with ARM and x86 machine code (NextStep aka OSX did this already a quarter century ago), or maybe even statically translate x86 machine code to ARM on the app store "server side".

Most command line code installed through homebrew is compiled on the user machine anyway, which leaves the closed-source and legacy UI applications not distributed through the app store (but by the time Macs switch to ARM, OSX probably will forbid to run those anyway).

solarkraft2• 8 years ago

Yes, they are. And yes, Windows does.

That MS has a working x86 compatibility layer makes me think that Apple could well have something like this too. If the new chips have performance comparable with Intel's, even a 5x performance hit for "legacy" apps might not be catastrophal, since developers in the Apple ecosystem are usually fast to update their stuff and cater to the demands of the early adopters with lots of money.

Apple has gone the emulation route with the PPC/x86 transition before. With their tight grip on the ecosystem, including the development tool chain, I think most software will be updated very quickly.

This is quite different from the situation with Windows software, most of which feels like the Devs hate the it, the platform and themselves.

MrRadar• 8 years ago

I could see Apple working around the emulation speed issue by entering an agreement with AMD where Apple designs 95% of the chip, has AMD design an instruction decoder to translate x86(-64) to native uops for the most common instructions (only falling back to emulation for uncommon instructions), and has AMD "manufacture" the chip (so it technically falls under AMD's x86 license).

This would allow Apple to avoid much of the overhead of software emulation and I'm sure AMD would be happy to play along since it gets them a (thin) slice of Apple's margins which they would otherwise not have. After a few generations when x86+ARM fat binaries are the norm in the MacOS ecosystem they could drop the x86 decoder (falling back to software emulation only) and presto.

hajile• 8 years ago

A huge amount of x86 is no longer patented and most of those instructions make the bulk of common x86 instructions. That could drastically reduce the overhead.

Even if they went the full-blown emulation route, A12 is almost an order of magnitude faster than the old designs Windows was running on.

HelloNurse• 8 years ago

The most interesting question is whether the dead Intel process node should be blamed on bad choices (e.g. deferring adoption of EUV lithography) or on incompetence, and also on shortsighted financial management or on optimistic/clueless technical leadership: we can live without Cannon Lake CPUs, but where will Intel be in 5 years?

dgacmu6• 8 years ago

TSMC 7FF isn't based on EUV either, and their 7+ is only going to use it on 4 "non-critical layers" (i.e., they're still testing it out).

The best speculation I've seen is this:

https://wccftech.com/analysis-about-intels-10nm-process/

Our sources tell us it had to do primarily with Intel overextending too early. SAQP or Self Aligning Quad Patterning is the technique the company used to make its 10nm process and it was the first in the industry to attempt to do so.

gok• 8 years ago

Isn't GF's 7nm process also dead? [edit: corrected now]

akritrime• 8 years ago

Afaik, only Samsung has figured out EUV for mass production?

enimodas• 8 years ago

I found this /g/ post of a while ago interesting: https://pastebin.com/TbtYmtyB

neverminder• 8 years ago

So is this legit? Mods have been killing this story with "NSFB" flag on /r/intel almost as fast as Intel killed 10nm for the past few hours. Not safe for who's business exactly in this case?

dracodoc• 8 years ago

Read with this Oct.18 news together:

Intel Split Technology and Manufacturing Into 3 Divisions https://www.game-debate.com/news/25940/intel-split-technolog...

As of this week, Intel has announced it’s splitting its manufacturing group into three distinct segments in a massive shake-up aimed at bolstering its development.

The move is tied into the departure of long-time senior VP Sohail Ahmed, who’s been with Intel for 34 years and is currently the head of technology and manufacturing at Intel. Ahmed will be moving on shortly, and Intel will be using this moment to restructure its business.

y-c-o-m-b• 8 years ago

I dreaded these types of restructurings when I was at Intel. It was interesting watching morale plummet while on the surface everyone was optimistic and in denial about the state of the business regressing. Deep down though people just couldn't shake the feeling that large layoffs were on the horizon and sure enough they came.

pertymcpert• 8 years ago

When were you there?

individualcell3• 8 years ago

That begs a question why something so important as CPU development has been left to a private company? Wouldn't be better to nationalise Intel and make sure it develops CPU that can serve the people and help advance the society? Corporate interests are not always good for the humanity and I think it is time for a state to step in. Intel has been having free reign for too long.

dgacmu6• 8 years ago

Your post reads like trolling, but if you're actually interested in the real history of this, semiconductor manufacturing has been a joint industry/govt. thing for almost its entire lifetime. As one starting point, read about SEMATECH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEMATECH

DARPA has long played a huge role in furthering US semiconductor capabilities.

individualcell3• 8 years ago

Look, we have state police, army and then see how disastrous private healthcare turned out to be.

Maybe DARPA should step up their game then, as instead of nationalising the Intel they could nationalise their IP and work on affordable and _fast_ CPU for the people as Intel fails to deliver.

We are yet to see a private company landing human on the moon. Imagine what CPU we could have today if state really took over.

rossdavidh• 8 years ago

If we had a single organization developing our national CPU manufacturing process, it would likely have been staffed much like Intel, since Intel is the big gorilla and the people best able to climb the organizational ladder ended up there. Thus, I think it would be more accurate to say that this is an example of why you DON'T have a single, national organization do something as important as this.

individualcell3• 8 years ago

I am not saying there should be one. Each state could have its own division / separate entity to enable competition.

eloff2• 8 years ago

We can look to NASA as an example of how well that might play out...

ThenAsNow2• 8 years ago

I am taking your comment as a concise way to imply significant inefficiency and poor efficacy at NASA. If I am misreading, please let me know.

Such polar implications about the efficacy of private vs. government (whether in R&D or other domains) represent reality poorly, and in fact your example contradicts itself with the enormous amounts of beneficial R&D NACA and NASA did and which industry built upon. This doesn't excuse the extremely wasteful behavior of NASA (e.g., SLS); only to say that you can't paint it all with the same brush of "wasteful, inefficient, government".

It is necessary to have capable people acting with good judgment to do "good and effective" work. Neither government nor industry have a monopoly on people of mediocre effectiveness or judgment. It is true that the government doesn't have market pressure to call it on the carpet for wastefulness. But that's the same attribute that enables it to undertake moonshots or do hard, expensive R&D that benefits society as a whole.

fermienrico• 8 years ago

I don't see any sources to the SemiAccurate's article. Also, they tend to be heavily biased and callous with regards to Intel.

rurban• 8 years ago

He called them internal "moles" from within Intel.

eksu• 8 years ago

@intelnews https://twitter.com/intelnews/status/1054397715071651841 “Media reports published today that Intel is ending work on the 10nm process are untrue. We are making good progress on 10nm. Yields are improving consistent with the timeline we shared during our last earnings report.”

jamiek88• 8 years ago

Charlie at semimaccurate has many, many items broken uncomfortable news about intel and others that has later been proven fully rather than ‘semi accurate’.

I know for me he has earned trust so to see this official denial has left me conflicted.

dragontamer• 8 years ago

Unfortunately... the full details are likely behind the paywall. Charlie is usually "fully correct" behind a paywall, but the "teasers" are less accurate and may have a bit of hype or hypotheticals in them.

Which is fine: I realize he writes like that so that he can get paid. But still, it means you have to take the rumors he hands out "for free" with a grain of salt.

Chances are: "10nm is cancelled" is closer to "some version of 10nm has been cancelled: Intel may be making progress on EUV or some other technology which they will THEN call 10nm in the future." But those details are what matters with regards to Intel's Ice Lake release plans, as well as AMD's plan for Zen2 / EPYC Rome in the upcoming years.

jaxtellerSoA2• 8 years ago

Yeah....I don't trust Intel to tell the truth at this point. With their recent i9 Principled Technologies shenanigans, and before that the "Hey look at this new CPU coming" *But we forgot to mention that the demo we showed you was using an industrial chiller. Sure you are still working on 10nm, I believe you. If by "still working on it" you mean you have a skeleton crew figuring out how to dismantle and sell or repurpose your 10nm fabrication line.

throwaway20483• 8 years ago

Not to mention "launching" 10nm with 2 low speed cores on a 4 core die and a busted GPU.

Dunedan• 8 years ago

Note that they don't state that they still intend to use their 10nm process for volume production.

purplezooey• 8 years ago

I don't like the choice of the word "knifing". British English or something?

Intel kills off the 10nm process?

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