
Intel delays 10nm Cannon Lake processors, again, until late 2019 - redial
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3036660/intel-10nm-cannon-lake-processors-delayed-again-until-late-2019
======
rm999
It's fun to dig up old predictions of where we'd be today. Here's an article
from 2002:
[https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1176510](https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1176510)

>Moore's Law scales to at least 9nm: technologist

>It'll be at least a human generation before Moore's Law begins to run out of
gas at around the 9nm and even then it may thrive, TSMC's chief technologist
said Tuesday (March 12). Calvin Chenming Hu told an audience at the annual
Semico Summit conference here that the 9nm node "can be ready more or less on
time, in 2028 according to long-term forecasts or 2024 according to the 2002
(industry roadmap)."

Intel is off by 4-5 years according to their initial estimates (in 2011) of
hitting 10nm, but they are 5-10 years ahead of where TSMC thought we would be
15+ years ago. TSMC was manufacturing at 10nm last year, incidentally
(Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835).

~~~
acchow
Isn't comparing TSMC to Intel process nodes like comparing apples to oranges?

~~~
Valmar
It's more one kind of apple to another.

They're both process nodes, with certain minor-ish differences here and there.
TSMC calls theirs 7 nm, Intel calls theirs 10 nm.

Their performance characteristics might be around the same. In practice... who
knows. We do know that Intel's current 10 nm CPUs are pretty much broken ~
best they could currently do was useless laptop-grade 2.5 GHz dual-core with
no functional iGPU. Not sure about the HT, though.

~~~
djsumdog
I really hope they don't give up on making discrete GPUs again. That internal
program and been brought back up and killed a few times.

I use to own an i740 way back in the day, and my cousin even worked on that
video driver. With nVidia's buy out of 3Dfx and PowerVR pretty much only doing
mobile phones/tablets, it'd be nice to see a 3rd player in the nVidia/AMD
space again _.

_ I know Matrox still exists, but for what I can tell, they just make cards
for 10~20 monitor setups (kiosks, stores, airports, etc).

~~~
Zardoz84
Interesting... i740 drivers was very broken. I remember having a lot of issue
with many games.

------
redtuesday
There are even rumors that Intel delayed the much more important Xeons to
2020, which could give AMD a 1 year head start with Zen2 on 7nm in the server
space (comparable to Intels 10 nm).

Copy paste from my posting yesterday:

EDIT: it seems the twitter post got deleted.

EDIT2: anandtech still has the pictures:
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/13119/intels-xeon-scalable-
ro...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13119/intels-xeon-scalable-roadmap-
leaks-cooper-lakesp-ice-lakesp-due-in-2020)

> _If the rumor [0] that Intel 's first 10nm server chip will only release mid
> 2020 is true, then AMD's shares will probably skyrocket again if they truly
> can release their Zen 2 server CPU mid 2019 (on 7nm which is comparable to
> Intel's 10nm)._

[0]
[https://twitter.com/david_schor/status/1022142835989118977](https://twitter.com/david_schor/status/1022142835989118977)

------
AceJohnny2
It used to be that Intel was undisputed king of the silicon race. It's kind of
shocking that they've fallen so far behind.

TSMC is already doing 7nm mass production right now:

[https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180622PD204.html](https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180622PD204.html)

(arguably, what they call "7nm" isn't quite that, but still...)

~~~
seiferteric
Every single time an article comes up about this someone says this, and every
single time someone refutes this saying that 7nm is a lie. Intel 10nm is
supposed to be more dense than TSMC 7nm (if they ever get there).

~~~
phire
This fact keeps getting more and more exaggerated as time goes on.

Yes, intel's 10nm absolutely smashes Samsung, GF and TSMC's 10nm processes.
Yes Intel's 10nm should be very competitive/comparable with Samsung/GF/TSMC's
7nm processes. But all of the Intel 10nm metrics are slightly worse than the
7nm processes its now competing with.

To cherrypick one metric as an example -

    
    
      * TSMC 10nm sram bitcell size: 0.042 µm²  
      * Intel 10nm sram bitcell size: 0.031 µm²  
      * TSMC 7nm sram bitcell size: 0.027 µm²

~~~
gimmeThaBeet
Thank you for actually showing feature size metrics, it has been a bit
maddening to see people say 'you can compare them directly' but then I can't
find a lot of comparisons about any kinds of features.

~~~
redtuesday
If you want that I recommend to look at semiwiki [0] and wikichip [1][2]

[0] [https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7343-leading-edge-
log...](https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7343-leading-edge-logic-
landscape-2018-a.html)

[1]
[https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/10_nm_lithography_process](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/10_nm_lithography_process)

[2]
[https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process)

------
gnusci
Well they have a lot of things to care of before to release the next CPU

[https://www.intel.ca/content/www/ca/en/support/articles/0000...](https://www.intel.ca/content/www/ca/en/support/articles/000025619/software.html)

In particular security issues related to the IME:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine)

~~~
throwaway77384
I hate that thing more than anything else in computing.

Windows 10 spying pales in comparison to the theoretical capabilities of the
ME.

There was this brief campaign to try to get AMD to let users control or
disable their ME equivalent, but it never went anywhere.

I would kill for a modern computing platform without this crap built in. Soon
forced DRM will go through it as well.

It's absolutely shocking to see how much control people (and even companies)
have surrendered to Intel.

I'd recommend only buying libre / coreboot compatible hardware (or librem, or
system76 systems) until users can gain more control over the Intel ME.

~~~
davidovitch
In the server/workstation space you can also opt in for an expensive Raptor
Talos II system (but you'll get Power instead of x86). There is very little
competition in the space for open/libre high end computer hardware systems.

------
chx
Note this article is guessing and it's very likely they are guesssing wrong.

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4190920-intel-
intc-q2-2018-...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4190920-intel-
intc-q2-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single) what was actually
said is this:

> we continue to make progress on 10-nanometer. Yields are improving
> consistent with the timeline we shared in April, and we expect systems on
> shelves for the 2019 holiday season.

This article guesses this to mean Cannon Lake.

In reality, it almost surely means Ice Lake.

------
lucian
The secret behind 10nm technology:

[https://www.asml.com/press/press-releases/earnings-growth-
co...](https://www.asml.com/press/press-releases/earnings-growth-continues-
driven-by-strong-sales-across-full-product-portfolio-continued-euv-progress-
enables-asml-roadmap-acceleration/en/s5869?rid=57342)

“Outlook For the third-quarter of 2018, ASML expects net sales between EUR 2.7
billion and EUR 2.8 billion, a gross margin between 47 percent and 48 percent.
R&D costs of about EUR 395 million, SG&A costs of about EUR 120 million. Our
target effective annualized tax rate is around 14 percent.”

~~~
ksec
I don't believe ASML is holding up the Intel 10nm. It was a problem in Intel's
own making. Their EUV equipment are mostly related Samsung 7nm, GF 7nm, and
TSMC 7nm+.

------
crunchlibrarian
It's so strange how this is all playing out almost exactly like the Athlon XP
days except with lots of cores and clouds.

~~~
thinkythought
Does anyone believe there's another core duo type massive leap out there to
even be had this time around though? AMD is going to slowly pull a bit ahead
of intel, especially in bang for buck, but i don't see how they can catch back
up.

As it is, last time intel jumped ahead it was by repackaging and souping up an
a mobile arch that in and of itself was based on the old pentium 3 arch. They
can't really mine the parts bin that way this time around either.

~~~
bhouston
If Intel goes multi-chip in the same package like Ryzen, then yeah, they can
get more cores in, similar to Ryzen Threadripper.

So there is a leap coming for Intel as well if they go that route, and after
the massive success of Ryzen, they are likely going there. Just easier to
scale core counts if you can use smaller dies and just use a lot of them with
an interconnect fabric.

~~~
xenadu02
Intel had two advantages:

1\. Relentless process improvement, putting them 1-2 generations ahead of
everyone else.

2\. Using their monopoly to prevent OEMs from shipping AMD processors.

#1 isn't true anymore.

#2 is almost irrelevant since mobile has taken over and makes the PC
revolution look like child's play by comparison.

Intel doesn't have a good graphics story. They sell hot power-hungry chips.
They no longer have a process advantage. Their monopoly in x86 is increasingly
(but not yet completely) irrelevant.

I'm sure they can ride the x86 profitability horse for at least 5-10 years.
What then? Remember: RIM was profitable for several years after the iPhone was
released. That didn't save them. Microsoft continued to rake in cash with
Windows/Office as iOS/Android/AWS/GC established a new world order that
threatened to make them irrelevant.

~~~
bradleyjg
3\. Yields. Historically Intel had the fastest ramp up to the highest yields.

I don’t know if that still holds true.

~~~
selectodude
Intel's yields at 14nm++++++++++ are exceptional now. We'll see how TSMC's 7nm
holds up though. They're still using DUV lithography with boatloads of
multipatterning. Intel's 10nm is running into issues due to that, I'm curious
what TSMC is doing correctly. They might just be saying they have good enough
yields at 7nm and be totally full of shit. One thing about Intel's scale is
they have to _acutally_ get it right before they can say they're successful at
it.

------
mandelbulb
From the original article:

>In the second-quarter results, Intel said that its 10-nanometer yields are
"on track" with systems on the market in the second half of 2019. Krzanich's
previous perspective wasn't specific on whether they would arrive in the first
half of next year or in the second half. On the conference call with analysts
on Thursday, Swan was more specific and said products would be on shelves in
time for the holiday season.

>Murthy Renduchintala, group president of the technology, systems architecture
and client group, said on the call that the products that will become
available in 2019 are client computing products, whereas products for data
center use will come "shortly after." The stock fell further after those
comments but later rebounded as executives talked about ongoing research and
development for next-generation 7-nanometer technology.

~~~
ksec
>Murthy Renduchintala, group president of the technology, systems architecture
and client group, said on the call that the products that will become
available in 2019 are client computing products,

This sounds to me like Apple telling Intel. We plan to ship new MacBook,
MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro after 2019 Keynote. If you don't deliver we will
kick all of Intel's product out of our roadmap. Including the modem business,
which although offer no profits value but lots of investor are looking at it.

------
piinbinary
I wonder how cloud computing providers feel about this. On the one hand,
competition between Intel and AMD for the cloud probably means cheaper chips
for them. On the other hand, they were probably looking forward to the power
savings from Intel's 10nm chips.

~~~
rbanffy
At the volumes they buy, whatever they pay is much different and bears little
relationship with what we pay. The prices to beat are acquisition + energy +
real estate / performance over product lifetime.

------
snarfy
And AMD's stock is up $3

~~~
darpa_escapee
Kicking myself for getting out at $17. Oh well, it was a good run, I've been
holding it since it was $4.

~~~
syspec
_humblebrag_

------
eecsninja
Cry me a river. I'm still waiting for the day when our productivity scales
with computing power (or node size). [1]

Until then, the drive toward smaller/faster/whatever-other-superlatives CPU's
is just people running on a hamster wheel.

[1] [https://foundersfund.com/the-future/#/artificial-
intelligenc...](https://foundersfund.com/the-future/#/artificial-intelligence-
software)

------
theshadowknows
Could someone ELI5 why smaller/denser feature size and layouts is the way we
achieve higher and higher speeds? Is it mainly about efficiency and heat?

~~~
rocqua
As I heard, it is mostly about heat. However, there is also a distance
component. It takes an electrical signal about 3 * 10^-9 seconds to cross 3cm,
about the size of a CPU. That is roughly one clock tick on a 3GHz processor.
Add in 'fill time' (you need some time for the voltage to build and stabilize)
and moving signals across a CPU becomes a challenge. My speed calculations
used the speed of a signal in a copper wire, not sure how the minute size and
perhaps even angles of CPU wiring affect that.

------
Fej
Where does Intel get their codenames from?

~~~
jandrese
Nearby geological features.

~~~
ttul
They should name the next devices after Boring, OR

~~~
ajuc
I believe Elon Musk has a trademark for that.

------
jandrese
AMD be like "C'mon Intel, you're making this too easy."

~~~
JudasGoat
Smart phone profit paid the "lion share" of 7nm development. That makes AMD's
selling of it's fabs look like a brilliant business move. At the time IIRC AMD
sold them in desperation to stay afloat. So maybe just a "lucky" turn for AMD.

------
mepian
I wonder what Jim Keller has to say about this, wasn't he hired to oversee the
introduction of the 10nm manufacturing process?

~~~
kinghajj
I don't think so, Keller's specialty is microarchitecture, not semiconductor
node processes.

------
joeblau
The end is nigh Intel. Just like Apple switched to Intel Power PC’s were not
upgrading, so will Apple switch to ARM.

~~~
torgoguys
Macs aren't a huge percent of Intel's processor business. It's a big enough
percent that they would miss it, but Apple's desktop and portable market share
is still small. And then there are servers.

~~~
kalleboo
True, but Apple releasing a truly desktop-class ARM into a MacBook might
finally kick Qualcomm and PC laptop manufacturers into gear to releasing
something that doesn't suck (like when Apple released a 64-bit ARM CPU and
Qualcomm first made fun of it then quickly released their own)

