News Intel Unveils Comet Lake Processors, 14nm Chips Join 10nm in 10th-Gen Lineup

[InvalidError]

ROFL... you are schilling pal... every time Intel switched to a new process node, they switched their production toward it, 10nm is the exception.

Intel had always been several months if not years ahead of everyone else in fab process before, so it always had plenty of time to spread new process across most of its existing fabs before anyone else caught up. This time around though, Intel is behind and any money spent on converting more fabs than absolutely necessary is wasted now that all the competitors have access to superior EUV equipment.

If you don't know why EUV is such a big deal, it is simple: having a shorter wavelength light source reduces the number of manufacturing steps needed to build the chips. Fewer steps means faster turn-around times and fewer chances for things to go wrong during manufacturing.

 

[bit_user]

Just because it is the only product you know of does not make it the only product Intel makes on 10nm, Intel's Agilex FPGAs are made on 10nm too. Since FPGAs tend to land in high-end military, telecom and other specialty equipment where cost usually is no object and long-term contracts are commonplace, they get priority over consumer stuff.

There's some time-compression going on, here.

It seems pretty clear to me that Intel's 10 nm:

1. Had low yields, for a long time.
2. Could not achieve higher clocks.

#1 explains why we only saw lower-end processors with small dies @ 10 nm. And no (working) iGPU, originally. Both points support the idea of the larger & higher-clocking Comet Lake parts being fabbed at 14 nm.

Where the time-compression becomes relevant is that you're assuming that the fact they've announced larger die products on 10 nm means they've had sufficient yield and are simply choosing not to use it for larger PC dies. However, none of those larger 10 nm products are yet shipping!

It sounds to me like you haven't been following the news of Intel's 10 nm as closely as some of us. Please keep the strength of your arguments in line with the quality of your information.

 

[bit_user]

Intel is building 10nm Ice Lake Server chips up to 26 cores and pcie4, 10nm Snow Ridge, 10nm Agilex FPGAs, 10nm NNP-I, 10nm Lakefield, 10nm Tiger Lake with 10nm integrated Xe graphics, and 10nm Ice Lake with 10nm integrated gen11 graphics.

The funny thing about all of those examples is that they're fairly tolerant of defects.

Doesn't it catch your eye that the 26-cores in their 10 nm server CPU is less than their current 28-core 14 nm parts? You'd think that with AMD killing them on core count, they'd be going for more cores, not less! But, with a high defect rate, maybe they can't guarantee a sufficient yield with all cores functioning.

Same thing for FPGAs, neural network processors, GPUs, etc. - just fuse off the units that fail. They also run at lower clocks (where the perf/W is more optimal), doing nothing to refute the idea that Intel's 10 nm simply cannot clock as high as their 14 nm.

They've stated they are shipping Ice Lake laptop chips in volume since May, with Dell taking orders for ice lake laptops since Aug 8.

Which are both small and low-cost. That supports the idea that their 10 nm is continuing to face yield issues. If they were simply trying to extract maximum value from the process, they should be starting out with higher-end mobile products, where their margins are quite a bit better.

 

[bit_user]

Some people in this thread seem to have missed this roadmap leak from 4 months ago:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-roadmap-10nm-14nm-gpu-cpu,39163.html


In particular, look at the second plot, which is the consumer products part:

So far, everything is going according to this plan. Specifically, Comet Lake releasing at 14 nm is not news. It doesn't signify anything we didn't already know about Intel's 10 nm process.

BTW, at the time the Comet Lake U-series specs were also leaked. Except for the top model (which was low by just 100 MHz), everything was right on target:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-10th-gen-comet-lake-cpus-specs,39200.html

 

[bit_user]

ROFL... you are schilling pal...

Um, don't you own AMD stock?

If I'm not mistaken, wouldn't that make you something of a shill? Not that you can't still have opinions and post about them, but to go so far as accusing someone else of being a shill, when you haven't even disclosed your own vested interests, would seem to be going too far.

 

[bit_user]

In case people missed them here were some other notable roadmap leaks.

Desktop CPUs:

Intel Client Desktop CPU Roadmap Leaked, Comet Lake and Glacier Falls Coming This Year

Intel's client CPU roadmap has leaked, revealing plans for Glacier Falls in the third quarter of 2019, and Comet Lake by the end of the year.

www.tomshardware.com

​

Server CPUs:

Leaked Intel Server Roadmap Shows DDR5, PCIe 5.0 in 2021, Granite Rapids in 2022

A leaked roadmap from Huawei reveals that Intel will introduce will introduce DDR5 memory and PCI 5.0 with Sapphire Rapids in 2021.

www.tomshardware.com

So, the 10 nm server CPU based on Ice Lake isn't slated to ship until Q2 of next calendar year.