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Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

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Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#21

Post by jolan »

eloff wrote: post #13

The article is saying 10nm is delayed indefinitely. The supporting evidence is not there. Intel is not commenting, and kaby lake likely just means that 10nm will take more time. After 14nm broadwell was delayed a year, this is not a big surprise to anyone. The day will come when feature shrinkage will end for silicon based chips, but it is not this day. I hope!

Just seems like they're backing off from publicly committing to a timeline (and probably giving themselves more time to get 10nm right). Which makes a lot of sense given how 14nm went and how long it took to get yields up to acceptable levels.

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/329835-intel-sees-path...

> Krzanich said the company thinks it signaled too much of its intentions to the industry about its 14nm plans, so "we'll be a bit more prudent in releasing information" about new manufacturing nodes. He wouldn't commit to the company's familiar Tick/Tock cadence of releasing a new process node one year and a new architecture the following year, though Smith said the company expects to be on a "fairly normal cadence" and "will talk about 10 nm in the next 12 or 18 months when appropriate."

They've stated in the past and recently reiterated that they have a clear path to 10nm.

Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#22

Post by dlevine »

freehunter wrote: post #14
batou wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using a 5 year old laptop with intel graphics. It's fine for everything other than CAD and gaming. The former I don't do and the latter I have an XBox. Perhaps the market isn't there so this is no biggy?

The PC gaming market certainly is there, and Intel graphics are very good these days. There are few games that cannot be played on Intel graphics now, compared to back in the GMA 900 days when almost nothing at all would run on an integrated chip.

Also, the GMA series of graphics chips were actually integrated into the motherboard rather than the CPU. By going with processor graphics, Intel has managed to reduce by at least one the number of chips that goes into a system, allowing for even smaller designs than before.

Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#23

Post by bryanlarsen »

agumonkey wrote: post #19
bryanlarsen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may explain why Broadwell isn't significantly faster than Sandy Bridge, but I don't understand how it has anything to do with this announcement. How does 10nm being delayed 1 year have anything to do with integrating graphics?

The GPU takes resources and put pressure on the design, at the expense of CPU logic. I think what he meant to say is that an intel CPU-only could devote more transistor to logic without having to deal with so much heat which might still be a problem at 10nm.

I'd argue the converse: when you are benchmarking a CPU intensive application, the GPU is mostly idle and not generating much heat, giving you margin to push the CPU transistors harder.

GPU designs are also much more regular than CPU designs, so heat is spread much more regularly rather than in a few hot spots. The regularity also makes it easier to transition to a new node.

Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#26

Post by ZenoArrow »

solomatov wrote: post #17
bryanlarsen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reference "The Boy who cried Wolf". That pronouncement has been made and proven wrong way too many times for anybody to take it seriously. Eventually the wolf will come and the limit will be reached, but until it happens nobody will believe it.

But how is this is possible? Diameter of silicon atom is 0.2nm and we need at least several atoms to create a transistor. I am sure Intel will be able to fulfill its roadmap to 4nm, maybe 2nm, but at this size quantum effects are so large, that everything should be changed.

It'll be interesting to see the parts that silicon photonics and molecular assembly come to play in meeting the future process nodes.

I agree with those who say we'll reach a cost barrier before we reach a technical barrier. If I were to make a wild guess, I'd say 7nm will be that limit, and that it'll be about 5 years away (Moore's Law is already broken and isn't likely to be fixed any time soon, hence the slower timeframe).

Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#27

Post by AnonNo15 »

solomatov wrote: post #17
bryanlarsen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reference "The Boy who cried Wolf". That pronouncement has been made and proven wrong way too many times for anybody to take it seriously. Eventually the wolf will come and the limit will be reached, but until it happens nobody will believe it.

But how is this is possible? Diameter of silicon atom is 0.2nm and we need at least several atoms to create a transistor. I am sure Intel will be able to fulfill its roadmap to 4nm, maybe 2nm, but at this size quantum effects are so large, that everything should be changed.

3D stacking. Heat dissipation is the limitation in this case, not the process size.

Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#28

Post by astrodust »

eloff wrote: post #13

The article is saying 10nm is delayed indefinitely. The supporting evidence is not there. Intel is not commenting, and kaby lake likely just means that 10nm will take more time. After 14nm broadwell was delayed a year, this is not a big surprise to anyone. The day will come when feature shrinkage will end for silicon based chips, but it is not this day. I hope!

Intel was charting out to 6nm, which seems totally insane, and I'm not sure they can push must past that wall.

This article from 2011 seems highly relevant: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/97469-is-14nm-the-end-o...

Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#29

Post by astrodust »

solomatov wrote: post #17
bryanlarsen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reference "The Boy who cried Wolf". That pronouncement has been made and proven wrong way too many times for anybody to take it seriously. Eventually the wolf will come and the limit will be reached, but until it happens nobody will believe it.

But how is this is possible? Diameter of silicon atom is 0.2nm and we need at least several atoms to create a transistor. I am sure Intel will be able to fulfill its roadmap to 4nm, maybe 2nm, but at this size quantum effects are so large, that everything should be changed.

Remember feature pitch, which is what the 14nm term measures, and layer thickness are two different things. The layers are way thinner than the feature pitch, so we're already at 1nm layer depths, or less, in some chips.

Re: Intel's 10nm 'Cannonlake' delayed, replaced by 14nm 'Kaby Lake'

#30

Post by astrodust »

MikeNomad wrote: post #24

I would think the Cannonlake delay is more about HVAC / Clean Room environmental controls for particles at 10nm than the actual chip fab.

That only affects yield, and the lithography process is largely the same, so nope.
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