It’s not some huge secret that Intel had a rough year this time around. The year 2020 was a bad year for everyone. But the silicon giant faced humiliation at every end by the hands of its biggest rival AMD.
However, it is still without a doubt a vital fact that intel is still the most preferred processor for home and office notebooks, at least for now anyway. The financial reports produced by intel for the fiscal year 2020 certainly gives its investors hope that the company is still running in profit. But the production issues are still haunting intel’s gains, and to add the cherry, AMD’s relentless attacks are giving Intel no room to breathe. Here are complete details as to why Intel has more delays, unsatisfactory yields, and production outsourcing.
Issues with the 10 nm node yields:
- 10 nm production started in late 2018 and did not appear viable for “full production” and “shipping for revenue” purposes.
- Upcoming SuperFin 10 nm nodes are “unquestionably far better than base 10nm. But still not as good at the 14 nm nodes.
- Cannon Lake yields lower than 25% even with iGPU disabled.
- The 10 nm capacity is far from handling an entire product stack.
- Even with SuperFin tech, the 10 nm production capacity may never match the 14 nm nodes.
- Intel’s bloating up of die sizes led to a 14nm shortage.
- “OEMs told they were to get a “small fraction” of orders of TGL. Improvements to yield won’t fully help because no. of wafer starts is still low.”
Server-grade Scalable Processor delays:
- Ice Lake SP processors delayed again due to a bug
- Sapphire Rapids is way better.
- “If both companies iterate perfectly on their roadmaps as planned (much easier on AMD’s side right now), Intel can not catch up to AMD until late 2024 or early 2025.”
7 nm node delays:
- “7 nm is significantly more delayed than the 6-12 months first claimed. Ponte Vecchio is in-hands basically now, and it was the first 7 nm product. Now it’s on TSMC. Sometimes December this year anyway.”
- The actual release schedule for the 7 nm products is still not clear
“Ice Lake was supposed to compete with [AMD’s] Rome (and it would still lose even with the on-paper and significantly better specs than reality). [AMD’s] Milan is going to likely beat Sapphire Rapids over a year earlier and before Ice Lake rolls out. By the time Sapphire Rapids releases, [AMD’s] Genoa will be here or right around the corner. Genoa was supposed to compete with Granite Rapids, which is late 2023 now.”
There are way more problems than what Intel could solve. In the case of AMD, the only problem it is currently facing is its low production capacity. And once it gets solved, it will only become harder for Intel to catch up to its rival.
