Intel Reportedly Eliminates 10 Nm Plans for Desktop; No 7 Nm until 2022

[Tsing]

Intel's 10 nm "Ice Lake" and "Tiger Lake" architectures may be exclusive to the mobile platform. According to Hardwareluxx's insider circles, Intel has scrapped its 10 nm plans for the desktop to focus on 7 nm manufacturing. Unfortunately, that generation (dubbed "Meteor Lake") won't debut until 2022.

"Comet Lake" will be succeeded in 2021 by the 14 nm "Rocket Lake" silicon, which somehow combines a Gen12 iGPU with "Skylake" derived CPU cores, and possibly increased core-counts and clock speeds over "Comet Lake." It's only 2022 that Intel will ship out a truly new microarchitecture on the desktop platform, with "Meteor Lake." This chip will be built on Intel's swanky 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication node, and possibly integrate CPU cores more advanced than even "Willow Cove," possibly "Golden Cove."

 

[_k_]

Same claim was made almost a year ago, oct 22nd 2018.

 

[AntiQuark]

Sandybridge lasted me 5 years, looks like Skylake is doing the same.
Unless AMD tempt me ...

 

[Dudhunter]

I wonder how much 10mn really cost intel, and if we can even calculate it.

 

[SmokeRngs]

I wonder how much 10mn really cost intel, and if we can even calculate it.

I doubt anyone will ever know how much 10nm has cost and will cost Intel in the future. I'm sure Intel knows exactly how much it has lost from the research and development point of view but the loss of revenue can never be really known. It's obvious that most or all of Intel's CPUs at this point would have been on 10nm if it hadn't been postponed for so many years but that's only part of the problem. With CPUs being put on the 10nm process it was supposed to open up a lot of fab capacity at 14nm for other products.

We know Intel has had issues filling server CPU orders already and a lot of that has to do with what amounts to reduced capacity. With 10nm Intel would have been able to get more dies from the same amount of silicon once yields were decent. Despite no change in the number of fabs, the number of products 10nm fabs could produce for the same capacity would be a good bit higher and thus capacity is effectively reduced.