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Intel Communications Hardware News Technology

Intel Says They Aren't Abandoning 10nm Chips, Despite Report Saying They're Canceled (pcmag.com) 107

Posted by BeauHD from the he-said-she-said dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Magazine: Intel is denying a new report that claims the chipmaker is abandoning its 10 nanometer manufacturing process following years of delays. "Media reports published today that Intel is ending work on the 10nm process are untrue," the company tweeted on Monday. Hours prior to the tweet, semiconductor news site SemiAccurate claimed that Intel was pulling the plug on the chip-making technology over the company's ongoing struggles to bring it to full production. Chips built with the 10nm process were originally slated to arrive in 2016, but the company has repeatedly pushed that launch date back. During Intel's last earnings call, executives said they now expect 10nm chips to officially drop during the 2019 holiday season.

In response to SemiAccurate's report, Intel said it continues to make "good progress" on the 10nm technology. "Yields are improving consistent with the timeline we shared during our last earnings report," the chipmaker added in its tweet. The next-generation silicon will supposedly offer a 25 percent performance increase over 14nm-manufactured technology. The 10nm chips will also be able to run on 50 percent less power when clocked at the same performance of a 14nm processor. Intel will hold an earnings call on Thursday, so expect company executives to elaborate on 10nm's progress then.
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Intel Says They Aren't Abandoning 10nm Chips, Despite Report Saying They're Canceled More

Intel Says They Aren't Abandoning 10nm Chips, Despite Report Saying They're Canceled

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  • Bloody Immigrants (Score:3)

    by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Monday October 22, 2018 @11:46PM (#57521745) Homepage

    Yes, it seems molecules migrating from one location to another represent a real problem when it comes to miniaturising electronics, once you get below a certain size (molecules mutually reinforcing their or is that your preferred location). High clock speeds and high operating temperatures also do not help.

    So shorter travel distances are going to become the next big thing, computers on a chip. Less flexibility in design but the more in can pack in the closest possible space, the higher the speed without extra energy. So multiple co-processing computers on chips or silicon has to go.

    • A SoC is the next big thing? Are you a time traveller from the 1980s?

    • I can see the Slashdot headline now: "Are Computers on a Chip a money-grabbing attempt to bypass right to repair laws?"

      • I can see the Slashdot headline now: "Are Computers on a Chip a money-grabbing attempt to bypass right to repair laws?"

        All I know is that it sure was better when we had vacuum tube smartphones.

  • Canceled some production but not all .. so I guess the report, from SemiAccurate, was only half right.

    Thank you. Try the fish.

  • TSMC and Global Foundries are already moving to the 7nm node.

    So far all Intel has managed with their 10nm process is delays. It was supposed to be out in 16 and now they are talking about holiday 19

    • Re:Pfft Intel is missing the boat (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23, 2018 @12:40AM (#57521873)

      GlobalFoundries has abandoned 7nm development, source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13277/globalfoundries-stops-all-7nm-development

      • Thanks but sad to know that leaves just TSMC and Samsung.

        • We have reach an inflection point where the foundry industry must become a commons to make further progress. I really can't think of any historical analogy, this is something new. The costs and risks are just too high for any one player to bear them alone, and yet, competing vendors cannot tolerate one single company getting a choke hold on the entire industry.

          Samsung is showing impressive resilience, they will be the last player to fold, leaving the entire pot to TSMC. Intel will give up their fabs within

          • Pretty sure the U.S. government wouldn't look too kindly on what would essentially be the creation of a trust to monopolize a market, or maybe they would times aren't what they used to be. You still have the research alliances working on greater miniaturization, but if the profit of hitting a new node isn't enough to payback the cost we just won't see it unless governments fund the production. I could easily see the U.S. or Chinese military wanting superior electronics.

            • Pretty sure the U.S. government wouldn't look too kindly on what would essentially be the creation of a trust to monopolize a market,

              How little you know about how capitalist states work.

              Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

              • Actually I KNOW SEMATECH had a lot of problems getting formed in the first place.

                And thank you for snipping out half a statement.

                Pretty sure the U.S. government wouldn't look too kindly on what would essentially be the creation of a trust to monopolize a market, or maybe they would times aren't what they used to be.

                • Actually I KNOW SEMATECH had a lot of problems getting formed in the first place.

                  And thank you for snipping out half a statement.

                  Pretty sure the U.S. government wouldn't look too kindly on what would essentially be the creation of a trust to monopolize a market, or maybe they would times aren't what they used to be.

                  Yes and you missed the point about massive state intervention and protectionism having always existed. The idea that the US cares about monopoly is laughable, they have a lawless out of control oligarchy. The videogame industry is a case in point. All big tech companies are basically stealing software from their customers because their customers are 100's of miles away. AKA "DRM" and "games as services" all came to be because what is the average consumer going to do when the company is 100 miles away, a

          • It's because the foundries have gotten so expensive, their projecting close to $20Billion fab cost for the next node after 10nm/7nm (intel/tsmc+samsung). I don't think even the biggest fab companies including intel can afford that, even for intel it would take 2 years of profits to build that fab.

            I don't know that were going to see cooperation between the fabs so much as a total slow down. Instead of pushing the tooling to it's limits they will back off and wait for the tooling to get there. Right now that'

            • even for intel it would take 2 years of profits to build that fab

              So I've been saying this for a while now. Intel has no choice but to go fabless. Not if, but when. I am thinking, Intel will never build a full EUV fab, 10nm deep UV will be their last hurrah. Charlie now starts a rumor that Intel will bow out even before that. Plausible, maybe even sensible, but I'll go with my gut feeling for now: Intel is deep enough into 10nm that they will carry on to the bitter end. (To what incidentally will be called 10th generation, at 10nm, because of the emergency insertion of th

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "TSMC and Global Foundries are already moving to the 7nm node."

      Intel's 10nm is comparable to 8.2 or 8.4nm, depending on how you measure, when comparing to TSMC. Global Foundries abandoned 7nm.

  • 2 stories talking about Intel, instead of 0. Result: +cancel -cancel 10nm = 0, +ad +ad = 2.
  • I left Intel in spring of 2016, when the worry about the 10nm was starting to get traction both inside and outside.

    And do you know what! There is life outside Intel!

    Here is a delightful little video of me re-enacting my behavior on my last days at Intel [youtube.com]. A real wonderful dance!

    And Arthur Rosenau' love splashed down from the heavens! [youtube.com] and made me almost completely forget Intel until I saw this article.

    Thank you to the folks at SemiAccurate for the story!

  • Pulling the plug on their advancement would be tantamount to calling the entire industry quits. With TSMC already shipping nigh equivalent chips and Samsung reportedly following early next year cancelling 10nm would put Intel so far behind as to be the same as giving up entirely. Considering their recent quarterly reports of giant profits, the rumor itself was fantastically stupid to begin with.

    • Note that nobody has actually seen TSMC 7nm volume production hit retail channels as of today. Supposedly, Apple will change that in a few weeks, but until they actually do, everybody is still playing bullshit poker.

  • Of course they would deny it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2018 @01:20AM (#57521971)

    Intel is a publicly traded company and bad news like you are abandoning the hopes you pinned on a new fabrication tech would severely damage their stock price. If you recall, during the aftermath of Meltdown, Intel made it sound like AMD chips had the same issue by conflating Meltdown and Spectre issues. Oh and the patch to the Linux kernel would have slowed down AMD chips as well which was an "accident" for sure.

    Intel cannot compete but they can lie and cheat with the best of them.

    • Either that or the unnamed sources weren't exactly in the know. It could be they killed off Method-1 for 10mm and decided to focus on Method-2.

      Or they revised numbers lower and layed off the unnamed source...who took it upon themselves to tell-a-friend that Intel was abandoning 10mm.

      I read the article and concluded that they didn't have the full story. I find it hard to believe Intel would abandon "small better" -- refocus efforts while they work out a few kinks, yes. It could be a market manipulation

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      There are serious consequences to lying to investors, so whatever they say on the upcoming earnings call is almost certain to be true. They may not be entirely candid, but they're not going to say progress is coming along great if they've already shut down the project.

      • Absolutely, which means they only have to have made progress in the past and they can't officially abandon it right now. However, they could abandon it or even have already drawn up plans to abandon it at any time in the future.

  • Quality journalism? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Tuesday October 23, 2018 @02:23AM (#57522097)

    Two days before AMD reports, three days before Intel reports, Semiaccurate floats this rumor with pretty much nothing to back it up. Here's the meat of their argument Note: The following is analysis for professional level subscribers only. [semiaccurate.com] So this is about signing up subscribers? Or an attempt at illegal stock manipulation? Both? It is certainly not about quality journalism.

    I am definitely an AMD fanboy, full disclosure there. But that doesn't make me an Intel hater, at least not when they lay off the dirty tricks, which appears to pretty much the situation at the moment. So... balanced assessment: no reason to doubt Intel's revised 10nm production schedule. This is all about yields as Semiaccurate is fond of pointing out.

    You can see from this [wikichip.org] that Intel's 10nm fin pitch is a bit more aggressive than TSMC's 7nm, 6% smaller. Intel's minimum metal pitch is a lot more aggressive, 22%. This is all right at the limit of what deep UV alone can do, so that might be Intel's bridge too far right there. I have a whole lot of difficultly believing that Intel did not learn enough from their aborted ramp up last spring to know exactly what they need to do to hit their yields, most probably including respinning their masks to a density nearly identical to TSMC.

    Buried in there somewhere I did find one credible little nugget... Semiaccurate pointed out that last spring's 8121U Cannon Lake part, produced in limited quantities and only ever seen in the hands of a few reviewers, is specced without a GPU. Not because it doesn't have one, but because does have one but it doesn't work. I find that credible. Debugging both a processor and a GPU is much more work that just a processor or GPU alone. In contrast, AMD doesn't try to fab APUs until both the processor and GPU have been successfully fabbed separately. Excellent strategy, a big risk reduction.

    Another huge thing AMD did to cut the 7nm risk was, jumping into bed with the phone industry. Intel convinced themselves it was a good idea to go it alone as usual, and were proved colossally wrong. Though I am not going to claim any special inside information, I think that Intel is going to bring up its Cannon Lake production successfully, 3 or 4 years behind schedule as they say, and that this is the end of the line for Intel as an independent fab. It's simple: the days of always being a node ahead are over, today they are half a node behind. From here on, there are no advantages to running an independent fab, only disadvantages. When Intel finally does ramp up Cannon Lake they will be in an excellent position to negotiate a new, cooperative deal with the rest of the industry, but if they persist in marching to their own drumbeat they will pay an enormous cost in market share and operating income over the next few years.

    I am going to take a wild guess here: Intel plays around with EUV a bit, gets some first hand data on what horribly nasty stuff that is, then makes a deal with TSMC. Intel is going to do just fine as a pure Engineering/IP player like AMD but they risk everything by running their own vanity fab.

  • They found their mole.

  • No one said it would be easy.

    It is no different than returning a rocket booster for reuse. They said it couldn't be done. Not easy but they found a way.

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