TR Forums

The good news for Intel is that despite the initial setbacks for 10 nm, they have stated that 10 nm yields are actually ahead of their internal expectations for this point in its lifecycle, which should help alleviate some of the backlog the company has been facing with production assuming the can use the improved yields to transition more of their lineup over to 10 nm a bit quicker. Intel has also stated that despite the years lost on 10 nm, they are moving back to a 2 to 2.5 year process cadence, with 7 nm on track for their GPU lineup in 2021.

blastdoor wrote:

I thought Moore's Law was dead, but maybe it's just dead at Intel?

btarunr wrote:

Intel CFO George Davis in an interview with Barron's commented on the company's financial health, and some of the reasons behind its rather conservative gross margin guidance looking forward to at least 2023. Intel's current product stack is moving on to the company's 10 nm silicon fabrication process in a phased manner. The company is allocating 10 nm to mobile processors and enterprise processors, while brazening it out with 14 nm on the client-desktop and HEDT platforms until they can build 10 nm desktop parts. AMD has deployed its high-IPC "Zen 2" microarchitecture on TSMC's 7 nm DUV process, with plans to go EUV in the coming months.

Barron's wrote:

Intel’s gross margin is down significantly year-over-year. Where do you see future gross profit margins going with the new manufacturing node cadence of every 2 to 2.5 years? (Intel has stated it intends to move to next generation chip manufacturing technologies at a quicker pace.)

Intel CFO George Davis wrote:

We’re still keenly focused on gross margin. Everything from capital efficiency to the way we’re designing our products. What we’ve said though, the delay in 10 nanometer means that we’re going to be a little bit disadvantaged on unit cost for a period of time. We actually gave guidance for gross margin out in 2021 to help people understand. 2023 is the period that we were ultimately guiding [when] we’re going to see very strong revenue growth and margin expansion. We’ve got to get through this period where we have the 10 nanometer being a little bit late [as] we’re not optimized on a node that we’re on. But [by] then we’re moving to a two to two and a half year cadence on the next nodes. So we’re pulling in the spending on 7 nanometer, which will start up in the second half of 2021 because we think it’s the right thing to do competitively. So we’re making the investment now that makes us just a little less efficient, and that’s reflected in gross margin.

Barron's wrote:

My industry contacts are saying AMD’s new Rome server chips are getting good traction with customers. Can you comment on the competitive landscape over the next couple of years against AMD’s chip lineup and Taiwan Semiconductor’s chip manufacturing technology?

Intel CFO George Davis wrote:

We said we expect to have heightened competition over the next 18 to 24 months. And our outlook reflects that. Our view on the nature of that competition and impact hasn’t really changed since we gave [our] longer term forecast in May.

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

Intel should just bite the bullet and look into using TSMC "just in case". Might take them a few years to adapt their designs to TSMC's process but better that than risk heading into Bermuda Triangle with their "world-class" semiconductor manufacturing.

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

K-L-Waster wrote:

Sure, nothing they've released in the past 15 months is all that interesting to most of us (I'm certainly not interested in anything in their current product stack), but that in no way means they're about to roll over and die. In the grand scheme of things, we're just not that important to the CPU market...

The issue is that Intel's downward spiral might allow AMD to rest on their laurels. Innovation will suffer and that will impact the minority that is us. I remember things in the CPU space were pretty boring before Zen.

Xolore wrote:

It might be a little too shiny.

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

Igor_Kavinski wrote:

Intel could always give up on the CPU business, sell their x86 license off to nVidia and become a GPU company first and foremost.

Wow. Turns out Intel is doing exactly that, except not just GPU but other things too. Guess they are tired and bored of trying to eke out 5% to 10% performance gains from their CPU architectures: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10 ... ess-model/

The slide that really drives this commitment home comes from Q2's investor meeting that explicitly shows the company moving from a "protect and defend" strategy to a growth strategy

Krogoth wrote:

Intel's biggest nemesis isn't AMD, it is ARM and emerging Chinese semiconductor firms.