
Intel: EUV-Enabled 7nm Process Tech is on Track - kristianp
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13683/intel-euvenabled-7nm-process-tech-is-on-track
======
quickben
Intel had been sayinga lot of things lately that didn't turn out true. Xpoint
claims, 10nm schedules, etc.

Is is probably a safe bet to ignore any news from there until they actually
deliver anything and read independent benchmarks.

It is really sad, they used to be very correct in their communication.

~~~
slededit
See this panel about Intel’s “project crush” and the defeat of the 68000 [1].
Intel inside was yet another brilliant marketing campaign to take pricing
power from the OEMs.

Intel at its core is a marketing company. If they also happen to have the best
tech that is nice too but not a necessity.

[1] [https://youtu.be/xvCzdeDoPzg](https://youtu.be/xvCzdeDoPzg)

~~~
Godel_unicode
> Intel at its core is a marketing company

That's an absurd hyperbole.

~~~
Retric
I don’t agree with his point, but I can see it. For years CPU performance has
largely been irrelevant, but they convinced the market to over pay on
underperforming hardware.

Intel inside is great marketing and creating different brands of processors
like i7 vs i3 independent of form factor pulls the focus away from absolute
performance. Getting software manufacturers to customize for your chip again
gets out of playing the actual head to head game.

------
baybal2
A worthy thing to note, the guy who invented finfet, Calvin Hu, was a TSMC
CTO.

Immersion litho inventor Burn Lin was TSMC's RnD VP.

Full depletion tech - TSMC

Modern metal gate - TSMC

Copper - IBM/TSMC

First EUV initiative at TSMC was started in... surprise, 2000!

TSMC does play a very long game. Intel was great at commercialising "latest
and greatest tech" quick, but TSMC was always ahead at mastering yields, and
delivering more "mature" processes for mass manufacturing.

P.S. Calvin Hu made a hybrid Lambo for his masters back in 1979!
[https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~hu/Hybrid%20car%20Chronicl...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~hu/Hybrid%20car%20Chronicle%201979.pdf)

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lysp
Of course Intel would say this - even if it wasn't on track.

They don't want people jumping ship, so have to at least set the expectation
that things are progressing.

~~~
latch
You think it's obvious that Intel would commit securities fraud?

~~~
ksec
By your analogy they already did with 10nm. ( And arguably 14nm )

~~~
latch
I didn't make an analogy. And, I was replying to the fact that my parent said
they would _lie_ about it.

It's one thing to have been wrong (even carelessly) about 10nm (more than
once). It's another to say that a company officer would intentionally lie (to
a group of professional investors no less)

~~~
quickben
Like they did with their initial xpoint announcements? They were cutting zeros
off their performance numbers for months to come :p

If that wasn't lying, I don't know what is.

------
jacquesm
If it is on track then one would expect at least a description of that track,
but all I see is dates related to 10 nm and that was years late. They cleverly
skip that by not offering a hard date but stating 'four years after 10 m', but
that's not yet a done deal.

Intel is still in the planning stages of manufacturing capacity and there is
zero proof that there is an actual POC or workable process yet to mass produce
7 nm devices at all, which is going to be _much_ harder than 10 nm to get to
acceptable yield.

I'll park this one right next to 'home fusion' and '5cts / KWh installed Solar
Power' until there is more proof, I would be quite surprised if there really
are mass produced devices for consumer use anywhere in the next 5 years, if
the 10 nm experience is any guide somewhere in the next decade is more
realistic so this isn't really news.

~~~
ascar
Doesn't AMD with TSMC 7nm basically ready to go? TSMC is already talking about
5nm.

While you might not see it in consumer hardware from Intel anytime soon, you
will from AMD.

~~~
leoc
Isn’t TSMC’s “7nm” more comparable to Intel’s 10nm?

~~~
Valmar
On paper, yes.

In practice, TSMC's 7nm node is actually functional, and producing working
chips.

Intel's 10nm... well, is garbage, because they were overconfident.

Now Intel has to either rework their 10nm node, after wasting many years of
work on nothing, or just jump straight at 7nm, which seems equivalent to
TSMC's 3nm node plans.

------
_ph_
To me, this sounds entirely plausible. Trying to describe a semiconductor
process by a single number is almost as abstract as describing a song with a
single number. First of all, the definition of that number is somehow vague.
It describes only a single design rule, the gate width of a transistor. But
that already assumes a certain fundamental layout of the transitor, which no
longer applies in advanced nodes with for example fin fets and all kind of 3d
structures. It also does not account for all the many hundred design rules
characterizing that process. To compare two processes, you not only need to
account for the transistor density, but also the performance characteristics,
like energy used, leak currents, switching speeds and so on.

With the 7nm process, TSMC seems to have clearly pulled ahead of Intels 14nm
process. The delayed 10nm would be competing with the TSMC 7nm process. The
10nm sound not very advanced, but it hides that other parts of the process
were very aggressive in specs. As everyone in the tech industry knows, complex
projects can get stuck easily. Sometimes for obvious mistakes, but often
hitting a road block, where no one expected one. So for whatever reasons, the
10nm project was quite delayed, we will see in 2019 if they manage to hit the
market at their current schedule.

The 7nm project is run independantly from the 10nm process, so it runs on its
own time scale. If they are not directly based on each other, it is quite
plausible that they made a completely different set of design decisions and
thus were not hit by the same road blocks the 10nm process had. As the 7nm
process is in an earlier phase of its development, it might of course have
just not reached some of the road blocks yet, but it is not necessary that it
does run into the same problems as the 10nm one.

------
dis-sys
People need to be very careful about Intel's definition of "on track". A
couple examples below -

In 2016, Intel confirmed that "10nm chips still on track for 2017"

[https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/16/intel-
corp...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/16/intel-corp-
confirms-first-10-nanometer-product-on.aspx)

In 2017, Intel announced that "Intel’s 10nm process technology is on track to
commence manufacturing in 2H’17"

[https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp-
content/uploads/sites...](https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp-
content/uploads/sites/11/2017/03/Kaizad-Mistry-2017-Manufacturing.pdf)

~~~
Symmetry
Technically they did sell some 10nm chips in 2H'17\. It's just that the GPUs
didn't work at all and the CPU cores had poor yields and worse power usage
than 14nm so they got shuffled off to obscure OEMs.

------
baybal2
Hearing how much commotion news from semiconductor industry been making
recently in the mainstream media, it seems that people have only began to
realise it now that semiconductor manufacturing is the "water tap of of modern
civilisation" \- not facebooks, amazons, googles, or other dotcoms.

------
sigi45
And still the 8700k costs are up and are there for a few month now.

Even with AMD.

Don't think Intel has too many issues getting there existing stuff on the
market

~~~
cma
People have said Intel contracted out fab capacity that is competing with the
8700k, because they expected to be moving to another node and having excess
capacity on that one but now they don't.

------
ulfw
"On track". Really? After how many years of delays?

------
vezycash
This reminds me of the story "the boy who cried wolf."

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tranchms
I’ve seen a big activity increase at EUV OEMs.

------
baybal2
>Intel: EUV-Enabled 7nm Process Tech Is on Track

As it was so for the past 10+ years :D

------
noipv4
anandtech is an unofficial spokesperson for Intel. Team red ftw.

------
late2part
Let’s see it ship before we believe the hype.

------
tanilama
I will believe it until it shows on Amazon.

------
ce4
Intel also claims to be well on track for 5G, however SemiAccurate begs to
differ:

[https://semiaccurate.com/2018/11/12/intel-tries-to-
pretend-t...](https://semiaccurate.com/2018/11/12/intel-tries-to-pretend-they-
have-5g-silicon-with-the-xmm-8160/)

~~~
ksec
I hope We start banning Semiaccurate article. It has no place on HN.

~~~
foepys
Please elaborate why.

~~~
ksec
Every single News out of the Site about Intel/ Nvidia are either inaccurate,
technically false, fake news or hyperbole. And all of its headline are nothing
but drive you to buy thousands dollar subscription for their "professional"
detail report.

Where is the $20B 10nm customer going bankrupt? Why is the 8160 Modem fake,
just because it is reusing a photo? I could still have given them points if
any of its statement or rumours had any technical or business merit. But it
doesn't. As much as I support AMD and likes to bash Intel, this is not how
Journalism should work.

~~~
bgarbiak
This, plus the obnoxious, childish writing style. It's a tech tabloid.

~~~
51lver
Sooooo it doesn't appeal to your taste? I like it. There, your point has been
countered.

------
mshockwave
7nm? TSMC: Hold my beer

------
ct520
On track to being a flop

~~~
Valmar
Intel's 10nm was a flop.

With 7nm, Intel seems to have taken a more sane approach, but their 10nm
failures and setbacks costed them a lot.

------
baybal2
EUV is semiconductor industry's equivalent of commercial fusion: every 5
years, the prognosis is made that we will get commercial EUV in the next 5
years. And like that for the last 30 years.

~~~
ksec
You will just have to look at ASML stock price and revenue. They are the only
one doing EUV. And it is nothing like Fusion.

TSMC will have multilayers 7nm EUV in 2019, Full 5nm EUV in 2020. Samsung has
7nm EUV sampling and are toying with the idea of EUV NAND and DRAM.

~~~
baybal2
Really full EUV in 2020???, makes little sense. Even TSMC 7FF uses plain non-
immersion litho for metal 7 and on.

~~~
ksec
>makes little sense.

They are doing 7FF+ in 2019 with few steps in EUV already. GF and Samsung also
have similar schedule. You don't have to trust me. You could look at their
investor meeting notes or report from Anandtech.

~~~
baybal2
Yes, but they are not gonna be using EUV for every layer. The only way it
makes economical sense is where they replace horrific SAQP layers with a
single exposure EUV pass, and use conventional litho for the rest to maximise
throughput.

------
hyperpallium
Their "on track", even if true, doesn't mean for Moore's law, does it?

x2 density in 4 years is not my Moore's law.

