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Why is Intel still using 14nm ?

chaparral

chaparral

chaparral

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Can anyone explain in some simple way that i may understand why intel is still using 14nm where everyone else seems to be using 8nm or 7nm or 5nm (AMD cpu's, Nvidia GPU's, Mobile phones etc)

Guessing even apple new M1 cpu's are also lower then 14nm ( i haven't looked to see what these are )
 
Journey said:
Making small things even smaller is hard.
Click to expand...
There was a picture/chart floating around a couple years ago, showing that we used to have dozens of foundries at the cutting edge node.

As that cutting edge node got smaller and smaller over time, the number of foundries able to keep up became fewer and fewer.

Now since GloFo pulled out, we're down to... three?

It's pretty darned amazing that we're able to put so many billions of transistors onto such a small package already. Like, mind-blowing amazing.
 
M1 is 5nm I think. As above, it’s difficult to reduce size. The machinery , wafers , everything needs to be that much better etc etc and Intel just don’t seem to have been able make it work wel enough to move on.

that being said intels current process is likely very much improved on the original 14nm stuff
.
 
I read that they were very ambitious with their initial design parameters for 10nm which is why the delay wasn't short.
Still surprised that it has been quite this much of a disaster though.
This isn't unprecedented as TSMC's 20nm was also a disaster.
But I think TSMC recovered much quicker than Intel have.
At least partly to the fact that it was easier fabricating at >10nm than it is at <10nm.

Impossible to say who will be leading in 5 years as things may be very different.
But based on business models, TSMC are in the driving seat as they have multiple customers to fund their R&D and FAB expansions.
If Intel lose too much market share and profit margin, the cost of their R&D and FAB expenditure is spread over too few chips which may not be sustainable.
Intel need the volume and profit to feed the beast, AMD don't.
 
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Don't forget these "nm" labels are somewhat arbitrary measurements and actually worthless for comparing between different companies.

All you can safely say is Intel is struggling to move to a smaller manufacturing node with satisfactory results and has failed for many years in a row to leave their "14 nm" process resulting in them going back to "14 nm" and refining it over and over again because at least they have that working.
 
The problem Intel had is when dropping to a lower process it can't maintain the high clock speed so even though the smaller process gains IPC those gains are wiped out by a reduction in clocks.

Alderlake 10nm is coming later on this year which should be the equivalent of TSMC 7nm so they will finally catch up with AMD although AMD is not standing still and will likely move to 5 or 6nm.
 
chaparral said:
Can anyone explain in some simple way that i may understand why intel is still using 14nm where everyone else seems to be using 8nm or 7nm or 5nm (AMD cpu's, Nvidia GPU's, Mobile phones etc)

Guessing even apple new M1 cpu's are also lower then 14nm ( i haven't looked to see what these are )
Click to expand...

Main reason Intel is now a value brand and allowed AMD to be the best and have the fastest cpus is they tried to do things too good.
Their design was simply not realistic so they got stuck on 10nm for 6+ years.
That alongside management issues made Intel lose all edge.
10nm couldn't scale so now they were forced to work with 14nm which add a ton of heat when you start ramping it.

So it was a combination of factors and hubris as they thought amd wouldn't do much as then they didn't know what Ryzen would do.
Then they couldn't compete anymore and become a value brand.

Naturally they may regain once they can design to a more realistic functional but these things takes time to design and work out.
And since Intel had a node advantage vs amd for many years and now lost that it simply been a uphill battle for Intel.

AMD and Ryzen simply outsells Intel 6 to 1 now.
Mindshare shifted
 
Journey said:
Making small things even smaller is hard.
Click to expand...

The problems with Intel go far beyond advances in semi-conductor fabrication. Just acknowledging the internal problems would go a long way but there seems to be a blindness to what everyone else can see and a continued executing on plans long after the situation has changed and they don't make sense any more - same as these football managers who make desperate changes in the dying 1-2 minutes of a game when everyone else could see they needed to come 20+ minutes before to stand a chance of turning the game around.
 
chaparral said:
Can anyone explain in some simple way that i may understand why intel is still using 14nm where everyone else seems to be using 8nm or 7nm or 5nm (AMD cpu's, Nvidia GPU's, Mobile phones etc)

Guessing even apple new M1 cpu's are also lower then 14nm ( i haven't looked to see what these are )
Click to expand...
Because they got lazy, complacent and didn’t think AMD would ever be a threat again, boy were they wrong
 
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