Submitted by Intel announced today in its Q2 2020 earnings release that it has now delayed the rollout of its 7nm CPUs by six months relative to its previously-planned release date, undoubtedly resulting in wide-ranging delays to the company’s roadmaps. Intel’s press release also says that yields for its 7nm process are now twelve months behind the company’s internal targets, meaning the company isn’t currently on track to produce its 7nm process in an economically viable way. The company now says its 7nm CPUs will not debut on the market until late 2022 or early 2023.
Intel is in big trouble.
At this point I wouldn’t be suprised if china had their own 7nm process running before intel…
First AMD went fabless, we thought that was a bad sign for AMD. Now intel could be forced to become fabless too. What a topsy-turvy world. I honestly don’t see this expertise coming back once it’s gone.
10nm would be something at least, but intel hasn’t even got that on track outside of it’s low end laptops. I’d like to see AMD CPUs get a bit faster to beat intel CPUs across the board…but there’s no doubt about it intel’s set low expectations for itself untill 2023. For intel customers it’s hard not to be disappointed.
And think about the TSMC tax to come, when the Taiwanese fellas get confident in their monopoly in the foundry market.
hdjhfds,
In the news today… Intel, AMD Reportedly Fighting for Capacity at TSMC
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313222-intel-amd-reportedly-fighting-for-capacity-at-tsmc
You are right, a monopoly in chip fabrication would be very bad for competition in the future, not merely due to prices, but also for access and even rising geopolitical risks.
I don’t fully comprehend this Fabless trend, it’s like giving the keys to the safe to your dodgy uncle!
Your analogy is wrong, which reinforces your lack of comprehension.
Fabs are very capital intensive operations, and unless you have an volume on your own products, it does not make sense to have your own fab.
AMD reached the point, long ago, where their volume was not large enough to justify keeping their own fabs. Intel is basically reaching that point now.
javiercero1,
It’s not a lack of comprehension. These companies do clearly have the volume. The real issue that nobody wants to admit is that american companies have been mismanaged and lost their competitiveness. Many US companies implicitly recognize this and don’t bother with US manufacturing. Take apple, who clearly have the “volume” to domestically manufacture everything on the iphone, but chose to outsource manufacturing to foreign companies covered by fewer labor laws and are willing and able to pay employees less.
This puts a slightly different light on Apple moving to ARM processors, if the situation is that they knew trouble was on the horizon for Intel. But they could have moved to AMD without the transition problems.
grahamtriggs,
They might have had inside information. I think it would have made sense for apple to at least offer AMD CPUs because many x86 consumers were excited about AMD prospects even before now. AMD’s king in the multicore productivity category and it would have given customers more options without having to retool software.
Intel having trouble shrinking their transistors and having less than 50% yields has been known for a while. It’s not some insider secret, and Apple’s switch probably has a lot to do with Intel’s supply shortage. ARM is just more fitting for them because they don’t seem to want to put the necessary effort into supporting a full featured desktop OS with things like OpenGL or Vulkan.
Apples move to ARM has nothing to do with Intel’s supply shortages. Apple will be one of Intel’s high-priority customers, so supply shortages will hit other firms before it hits Apple.
No, the move to ARM is more to do with performance per watt. Apple have been making their own low power, high performance ARM chips for their iPad and iPhone lines for about 8-10 years now. The fact is, they’ve developed the technology so far now, that their own silicon can outperform Intels chips for the same power consumption. The added bonus is, in-house chip manufacturing is also cheaper in the long run. Apple don’t have to pay anyone else for manufactured CPUs, all the profits go back to them. Apple will likely save a good few dollars not having to pay Intel for chips.
Correction, Apple’s CPUs are designed in-house, they outsource the manufacturing.
javiercero1,
Indeed, they outsource chip manufacturing to TSMC, the same manufacturer AMD uses and now the same company intel is reportedly going to rely on for near-term production. TSMC has cutting edge technology, but this much market consolidation makes me uneasy. We’ll see if intel fabs can rebound in 2023 as promised or if this is a long term dependency.