In recent years I couldn’t help come to the conclusion that Intel has very much been resting on their laurels thanks to AMD not putting up much of a fight for a while now, pre-Zen. At least to me that would be the most obvious explanation why Intel has had so much trouble with getting their tech to 10nm, delaying it multiple years. Meanwhile other companies left and right are announcing 7nm productions that will soon come to market in products like CPUs (next years AMD Zen generation).
So when today a rumour popped up that Intel would be completely skipping 10nm and going right to 7nm, I was inclined to believe it, thinking there must be some difference in the tech used that might have made it easier to do 7nm despite it being a significantly smaller process.
Along comes Intel, unusually quickly disputing this claim, noting that they are making good progress with 10nm… given that there’s an earnings call later this week for Intel, I suppose can see why they’d respond this fast. It does make me wonder though, according to the previous earnings call that would mean that 10nm processors would come in the second half of next year. I hope for Intel that this won’t mean that they’ll be similarly behind with 7nm tech, that might put them at a distinct disadvantage, unless they really mastered 10nm due to the delays (which I kind of doubt).
Ah well, won’t complain if AMD manages to take advantage of this mess, with Zen they finally got back to having a great tech foundation. Don’t fumble the ball now, Intel is kind of giving you a wide open space here!