KBR = Kaby Lake Refresh. Interesting, in that Intel's "10nm" node is said to be more power efficient than their "14nm" node, in this case, per AnandTech (https://www.anandtech.com/show/11738/intel-launches-8th-gene...) KBR was launched with 14+nm. Could be that early of a 10nm part wasn't yet very power optimized. And that would be a very good explanation for why the GPU was disabled vs. the yield issue, which we're pretty sure is much more fundamental than specs of dust and other isolated things that can disable a part of a die without killing it altogether.
Hits forehead for forgetting to check SemiWiki. But note that since then Global Foundries has abandoned for now offering this general node, 7nm as they name it, 10nm as Intel does.
But isn't the whole die exposed and otherwise processed as a whole piece? Very much not deeply educated here and can't justify the investment to change that, my primary mental models for defects are either something that takes out a whole die, like one lithography step being misaligned, or spot damage like a piece of dust.
But there are clearly issues in between that are statistical inside a die, I recall Semiaccurate saying one of Nvidia or AMD did a GPU tape out to a TSMC process where they duplicated vias because that process' were iffy, and they compensated with a less dense design where either one or two working was OK. If Intel is suffering that sort of problem, then the GPU is a big part of the die that can be fused out while you still have something useful. If all your CPUs or all your L3 cache banks fail, a working GPU is pointless.
That article points out two particularly suspect things Intel is uniquely trying at this node: SAQP for the metal layers, which I've seen cited before, and which they generically officially blame, and cobalt in interconnects. And at least one other thing was mentioned as suspect, and four new things total.
One ray of hope is mentioned for Intel, in that they were the most aggressive in the industry with their 14nm and 10nm nodes, and in both cases paid the price in yields, while they're being conservative for their 7nm node, no doubt because EUV is a very big step for everyone. Semiaccurate also commented and/or theorized that a compelling reason Intel is continuing to work on their 10nm at one fab is that one or more things in it are also going to be used in their 7nm, so they might as well debug them now and there, and sell some chips while they're at it.
