[The Exiled]

According to Intel ...10nm product era has begun, 7nm on track

After years of delays, Intel is finally shipping its 10nm processors in high volume, and the company is preparing to fire up another fab to produce an even larger volume of 10nm products. Along with producing more of the company's existing Ice Lake-U/Y products, Intel is also planning for server CPUs and GPUs as well, with Ice Lake-SP CPU as well as the DG1 GPU already up and running in Intel’s labs. Meanwhile, even farther out, Intel is eyeing 2021 for the rollout of its EUV-based 7nm process. In addition to client Ice Lake CPUs and Agilex FPGAs that are currently shipping, Intel’s 10nm portfolio includes datacenter-grade Xeon (Ice Lake-SP) processors due in the second half of 2020, discrete DG1 GPU(s), an AI inference accelerator, and a 5G base station SoC.

• One thing to keep in mind here is that Intel will use different iterations of its 10nm technology to make different chips.

The company no longer sets ultra-ambitious goals for scaling each node, but attempts to find a right balance between performance, power, cost, and timing. Furthermore, the manufacturer no longer designs products for a particular process, but intends to use the most optimal one it has at the moment. Overall, Intel says that it intends to get back to its usual process technology cadence and introduce brand-new technologies every 2 to 2.5 years, and recapture its process leadership in the future. While Intel also plans to use 7+ and 7++ technologies in 2022 and 2023, the company is already working on its 5nm process and is currently ‘engineering’ it, which means that the path-finding stage has been passed and fundamental things like materials and transistor structures were set.

Izvor: AnandTech