[The Exiled]

Ili stvarno imaju novi 10nm spreman ili budu dobar stari 14nm dodatno nasvirali, pa ko i svi ostali - jednostavno ga marketing označi kao 10nm i voljno.

Mada nadam se da sad uistinu imaju funkcionalnih 10nm za (masovnu) proizvodnju.

Sunny Cove (2019) is an improved architecture CPU in 10nm -- that'll be the downgraded but hopefully now working 10nm process, might be called 10+ (but it's really 10-...). Willow Cove (2020) is a further optimised Sunny Cove with process tweaks, presumably Intel will call this 10++ but it's based on the same process, it's certainly not 7nm. Golden Cove (2021) is another 10nm CPU with more features, and maybe (going by Intel strategy in the past) some more process tweaks, maybe this will be 10+++? Timescales for 7nm are (according to Intel) completely decoupled from 7nm; logically you'd expect the first 7nm CPUs to emerge in 2022 according to the above dates, but maybe if 7nm really does deliver on-time (unlike 10nm...) the later 10nm CPUs will get canned in favour of 7nm.

There have been various rumours about what Intel are doing to fix their 10nm yield problem, including going from 36nm to 40nm MMP and ditching SAQP for interconnect, removing cobalt for interconnect, and removing COAG (said to have been the reason they couldn't get any GPU yield on the i3-8121U). Whatever the exact truth is, there is bound to be some impact on density below the much-vaunted Intel numbers (probably now similar to or maybe even a bit lower than TSMC), and more to the point relayout of all custom IP (which Intel have a *lot* of) as well as new standard cell and RAM libraries which means a big delay -- normally fundamental layout changes to a process like this need re-characterisation of libraries and IP before products can be taped out. Best guess is that the "new" Intel 10nm process (and products made on it) will be at least a year behind TSMC 7nm even if things go well, which then puts it directly up against TSMC 7nm+ (partial EUV) which will be ~20% denser using the high-density process/libraries, and probably faster (at the same density) than Intel using high-speed process/libraries. Intel must be hoping that their promises of delivering their 7nm process on-time (whatever that means...) using a different team pay off, but it seems impossible that it will catch up with TSMC 5nm which will be in risk production in 2Q2019.

If Zen 2 can be pushed as high as 5GHz it's likely to be because AMD chose high-speed low-density libraries (e.g. 9-track 4-fin with DDB) instead of low-speed high-density ones (e.g. 6-track 2-fin with SDB), together with a performance-oriented metal stack (fewer minimum pitch layers, tapered width higher metal, thick top metal with MIM decoupling) instead of a density-oriented one (more fine-pitch metal, thinner higher metal) --- but all these are elements of the same basic 7nm process, the recipe you choose from the huge bag of ingredients is up to you. Intel would always have used high-performance options, TSMC used to introduce high-density ones first because that was their big customer base, but now they also see HPC/CPU as a priority so are making suitable process options available from the start.

Izvor: SemiWiki Intel 7nm on track forum thread