Intel's 7nm is Broken, Company Announces Delay Until 2022, 2023

[axipher]

Intel announced today in its Q2 2020 earnings release that it has now delayed the rollout of its 7nm CPUs by six months relative to its previously-planned release date, undoubtedly resulting in wide-ranging delays to the company's roadmaps. Intel's press release also says that yields for its 7nm process are now twelve months behind the company's internal targets, meaning the company isn't currently on track to produce its 7nm process in an economically viable way. The company now says its 7nm CPUs will not debut on the market until late 2022 or early 2023.

 

Here's the snippet from Intel's press release:

 

"The company's 7nm-based CPU product timing is shifting approximately six months relative to prior expectations. The primary driver is the yield of Intel's 7nm process, which based on recent data, is now trending approximately twelve months behind the company's internal target."

 

Source

[ENTERPRISE]

OUCH. That is a huge blow, this will really give AMD the extra juice to run away with the consumers. Looks like Intel is going to have to keep banging out those refreshes which is bad news as they cannot optimize their current fab much more to make it compelling. Then again....the fanboys may just keep Intel afloat.

[axipher]

I'm no financial expert, but I think Intel's CPU division was still holding on to a deep set of reserves from then they did have virtually all of the OEM and Server space, now that AMD is really digging those markets away, the reserves are being spent more cautiously on refinements until a large breakthrough.

 

Intel might just have to bank on having such a diversified portfolio and make a large investment in to their CPU division and just to the Zen route and try to design something new for the next process node and win in some other way. The Core architecture and its derivatives has been around for far too long and we need some spicy new innovations to keep a competitive market alive.

[ENTERPRISE]

I'm no financial expert, but I think Intel's CPU division was still holding on to a deep set of reserves from then they did have virtually all of the OEM and Server space, now that AMD is really digging those markets away, the reserves are being spent more cautiously on refinements until a large breakthrough.

 

Intel might just have to bank on having such a diversified portfolio and make a large investment in to their CPU division and just to the Zen route and try to design something new for the next process node and win in some other way. The Core architecture and its derivatives has been around for far too long and we need some spicy new innovations to keep a competitive market alive.

 

Yeah I think that is the only thing they can do. IMHO Intel's complacency is really starting to show, first it was due to the surprise of Zen giving them a kick in the pants and now it has become obvious that they had far too much confidence in their current fab that they left it way to late to work on their 7nm products.

 

I don't doubt Intel will retain the majority of the market share, but I am confident in saying it will continue to shrink and confidence in Intel products could be shaky compare to AMD options.

[schuck6566]

When I was first reading the stories yesterday,All I could picture was the Intel ceo's laying on the floor holding a CPU or a discrete graphics card up in the air and all hollering "HELP! I'm broken and I can't get up!" while AMD is in the background saying "Don't worry Intel! We have your consumers backs!" :friends_gathering:

[ENTERPRISE]

When I was first reading the stories yesterday,All I could picture was the Intel ceo's laying on the floor holding a CPU or a discrete graphics card up in the air and all hollering "HELP! I'm broken and I can't get up!" while AMD is in the background saying "Don't worry Intel! We have your consumers backs!" :friends_gathering:

 

[schuck6566]

And people have started being thrown under the bus! https://www.anandtech.com/show/15932/intel-reorganizes-in-wake-of-7nm-woes-chief-engineering-officer-murthy-renduchintala-to-depart

[ENTERPRISE]

Well that did not take long, now the blame game begins !

[Andrew]

I don't really get the hate that Intel is getting for sticking to 10nm for so long. Why does it matter? As long as the CPUs are improving performance while staying the same price or getting cheaper, it doesn't make a difference.

[schuck6566]

I don't really get the hate that Intel is getting for sticking to 10nm for so long. Why does it matter? As long as the CPUs are improving performance while staying the same price or getting cheaper, it doesn't make a difference.

 

The hate they are getting is because they told their investors @ several quarterly meetings that the 7nm process was right on track & there were kinda no issues with it being released on schedule.So,investors kept their money where it was,stock DIDN'T drop because people were like "Oh,well Intel's 7nm will be out soon & even better than AMD's" when AMD released ryzen & started showing some competition.When they Finally announced the delay, the stock dropped 18%.Kinda gives ya an idea they were counting on that in the investment side of things. https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-7nm-cpu-delay-sees-shares-slump-as-it-falls-further-behind-amd-ryzen

[ENTERPRISE]

 

The hate they are getting is because they told their investors @ several quarterly meetings that the 7nm process was right on track & there were kinda no issues with it being released on schedule.So,investors kept their money where it was,stock DIDN'T drop because people were like "Oh,well Intel's 7nm will be out soon & even better than AMD's" when AMD released ryzen & started showing some competition.When they Finally announced the delay, the stock dropped 18%.Kinda gives ya an idea they were counting on that in the investment side of things. https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-7nm-cpu-delay-sees-shares-slump-as-it-falls-further-behind-amd-ryzen

 

Oh yeah ! I completely forgot about that. Intel had a lot of eggs in that 7nm basket which they kept leading people to believe was OK. I think I would pull out my investment to if someone come out one day and told me the tech I was told was fine was actually straight up broken.

[Andrew]

 

The hate they are getting is because they told their investors @ several quarterly meetings that the 7nm process was right on track & there were kinda no issues with it being released on schedule.So,investors kept their money where it was,stock DIDN'T drop because people were like "Oh,well Intel's 7nm will be out soon & even better than AMD's" when AMD released ryzen & started showing some competition.When they Finally announced the delay, the stock dropped 18%.Kinda gives ya an idea they were counting on that in the investment side of things. https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-7nm-cpu-delay-sees-shares-slump-as-it-falls-further-behind-amd-ryzen

 

That makes sense then for the shareholders to be upset that they're being lied to, but I still don't get the hate they're getting from regular people on the internet who aren't shareholders. Intel might not be releasing 7nm, but they are still releasing 10nm CPUs that perform better than the predecessors for around the same price as the predecessors.

[schuck6566]

 

That makes sense then for the shareholders to be upset that they're being lied to, but I still don't get the hate they're getting from regular people on the internet who aren't shareholders. Intel might not be releasing 7nm, but they are still releasing 10nm CPUs that perform better than the predecessors for around the same price as the predecessors.

 

It just feels like 1 betrayal after another. HOW long did they ignore meltdown/spectre and just keep making the cpu's with the flaw in them? Hmmm, here's a list of the Intel cpu's And then when AMD comes out with Ryzen and loads of cores @ an affordable rate,Intel's like "Oh! We can add cores,and we'll even have lots of cores on the same size cpu as AMD soon.Just give us time." So,we as consumers drank the Flav'R Aid again and either waited on them,or bought the latest offering thinking we might be able to upgrade (like AMD let us from the 2000 series to 3000 series on the x470 chipset even having support for pcie4.0)but what happens? We hear "Oh,so sorry,we're not even going to be able to make our own 7nm processor,we have to send out for it." Then the data breach that says they've been hiding MORE issues & doing nothing about them? people feel betrayed and it makes them feel angry. Edit: Wanted to add China's response to Intel's Life Alert call during the last meeting about the 7nm process....

Edited August 10, 2020 by schuck6566

[schuck6566]

P.S. all the 10nm intel cpu's to date are mobile processors so they aren't really holding their own on the desktop cpu in the 10nm scene,Unless you are looking @ multi processor xeon systems? https://www.anandtech.com/show/15862/intel-launches-cooper-lake-3rd-generation-xeon-scalable-for-4p8p-servers see the specs for the 10th gen i5 included with post.

 

[axipher]

Well I can only assume that Intel put so much effort in to trying to get 7nm working with their more technical team members and left the newer talent on refining 14nm so now we have 14nm that keeps carrying over the same hardware vulnerabilities and performance issues, 10nm didn't get much love as Intel was pushing hard to fast-track 7nm to catch up so 10nm only really got optimized for mobile or some server, and 7nm is still for lack of a better term, a bust...

 

This is the take of someone who has no inside information of Intel or how they operate their teams, but as someone who works in electrical device manufacturing where you can have 3 different generations of a technology under research/proto-typing/development at a given time and normally the more experience members get put on the newer generations in research or prototyping while the juniors continue to support and fix bugs in the already developed generations.