Intel's 14nm Broadwell Delayed Because of Low Yield 96
judgecorp writes "Intel has put back the delivery of its 14nm Broadwell desktop chip by a quarter because of a manufacturing issue that leaves it with too high a density of defects. The problem has been fixed, says CEO Brian Krzanich, who says, 'This happens sometimes in development phases.'"
The good news is that it is just a defect density issue. A first round of tweaks failed to increase yield, but Intel seems to think a few more improvements to the 14nm process will result in acceptable yield.
Re:640nm ought to be enough for anyone.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The main reason die shrinks happen is usually at the behest of the manufacturer, and rarely at the behest of the customer (unless we are talking die sales, which we usually don't for Intel, and which is a whole different ball game). There are always downwards pricing pressure on the manufacturers (a tad less on Intel, I'd think, given their elite position amongst fabs) and in order to preserve their margins, they work in these shrink transitions w/ their customers. But make no mistake - for customers, those shrinks imply requalificaiton and a whole new product development cycle before they can go to market w/ those. They'd rather get their price cuts on the same die, except that the manufacturers typically won't give them that.
In the past, the reason to go for shrinks was improved clock speed, and more recently, it's power consumption. But power consumption alone doesn't drive such market trends, particularly given the expenses incurred - what really drives it is cost. But again, as I said, we're really past the point where shrinks would result in any significant cost savings.