Are Intel throwing shade on AMD’s 12nm node whereas nonetheless claiming “process leadership”?

Are Intel throwing shade on AMD’s 12nm node whereas nonetheless claiming “process leadership”?

Intel’s CEO, Brian Krzanich, has tried to stay bullish within the face of getting to announce one more delay to the volume production of their 10nm products, and the very fact they’re spinning out but extra 14nm chips. So bullish actually, it seems to be like he’s calling out the AMD Ryzen 2 CPUs being marketed as 12nm merchandise.

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So yeah, Intel have knocked again the beleaguered 10nm manufacturing course of so that it’ll solely shift into quantity manufacturing someday in 2019. And that might imply December 31st for all we all know, as Krzanich admitted he couldn’t say whether or not it could be within the first or second half of 2019.

But when he was requested, on the current Intel earnings call, whether or not this meant their manufacturing course of management was dwindling, he responded fairly strongly.

“So let me start with we absolutely have product and process leadership,” he says. “We’re shipping 10nm products today. So I did want to make sure that that was very clear to you, and those are the densest, highest performing products out there.”

I imply, attempt to discover these 10nm CPUs and also you get a gold star for effort, as a result of we’ve tried to no avail. But it’s the continued efficiency of the 14nm course of which has given Intel the leeway to maintain plugging away on the damaged 10nm node.

Intel Coffee Lake die

“We believe it continues to have legs,” he says, “that we can continue to make improvements, both within that process technology and architecturally. That’s really giving us the breathing room to go and make these yield improvements.”

Reiterating his earlier claims that each one the ticks and pluses added on to the 14nm course of have delivered a 70% efficiency increase in contrast with the primary 14nm Broadwell chips, Krzanich claims anybody else would have taken that additional efficiency as a possibility to rename the node.

“We believe that if you take a look at others during this timeframe,” he says, “if you looked at anybody else and said 70% improvement on a technology node, they may rename those nodes as we go through this. And we have always chosen to be really transparent and clean and just say it’s improvements on the existing technology rather than renaming.”

Intel wafer

I’m certain Intel will deny it till their blue within the face, however that appears loads like a thinly veiled reference to AMD’s new Ryzen 2 processors being known as utilizing a 12nm node regardless of them primarily being precisely the identical because the 14nm design. AMD themselves have defined the 12nm design is “not an area statement, it’s a power efficiency statement,” and when delidding his Ryzen 2 chips De8auer discovered that there was zero distinction within the measurement of the CPU in contrast with first-gen Ryzen.

Though the naming is just not right down to AMD, it’s right down to GlobalFoundries who created the 12nm FinFET design AMD have used for the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X. But GlobalFoundries are claiming density enhancements over their very own 14nm course of, so it’s potential there actually are 12nm transistors in there. 

But node measurements are fairly hazy at the most effective of instances. While it was measured by the drawn gate size of a quantity manufacturing chip it’s now a bit extra ephemeral, and Intel aren’t precisely pure because the pushed snow on this both. 

Intel’s personal 22nm node had a gate size of 27nm, whereas TSMC’s 16nm course of has a gate size of 20nm, and GlobalFoundries 14nm course of has the identical 20nm gate size. As a report in Electronics Weekly states, it’s now fairly regular for chips to not include any options which straight relate to the quantity used to market the manufacturing course of.

Fun instances.


 
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