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from the golden-parachutes-are-not-for-enginners dept.
Intel is revamping its technology leadership in a bid to turnaround its manufacturing unit after announcing delays in its 7nm processes.
Last week, Intel said on its second quarter earnings report that its 7nm products would be delayed. Rival AMD is already on 7nm as is TSMC. Since Intel's earnings report and market cap hit, analysts have been speculating that the chip giant may leave manufacturing.
In other words, Intel needed to revamp its technology organization. Under Monday's reorg, Dr. Ann Kelleher will lead technology development. She had led Intel manufacturing. Kelleher will focus on developing 7nm and 5nm processes. Murthy Renduchintala, Intel's chief engineering officer, will depart Aug. 3.
Intel is also separating its Technology, Systems Architecture and Client Group unit into teams focused on technology development, manufacturing and operations, design engineering, architecture, software and graphics and supply chain.
Safe to say Intel will be best positioned to fire 3 executives at the next slippage - I guess that may make the stock rebound faster than firing a single one.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @01:47PM (1 child)
not sure this is relevant. if we assume that maybe 3nm is the smallest for this kind of computer tech (electron switching) and we see ... uhm ... errr intel ~10 nm single thread performance at X Ghz be the same as AMD at 7 nm single thread at same X Ghz then that is a intel lead of uhm ... err ... 30%?
ofc we gotta look at TDP and $$$ also.
but my guess is that if push comes to shove, intel flips a switch and a week later they got 7nm.
it's probably because "core architecture" hammered AMD hard and it was on the brink of turning intel into a monopoly ... so process shrinking problems to the rescue.
let AMD refill their financial coffers at the cost of having to move closer to the limit (3nm) whilst leaving intel comfortable breathing room (- 7 nm to go to limit) to "catch up"...
all said, i think the shrink delay is a "monopoly" deferring tactics.
note: i like AMD. used to have tons of 'em.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday July 29 2020, @02:05PM
There are plans for nodes called "2nm" [guru3d.com], "1.4nm" [anandtech.com], "1nm" [semiengineering.com], etc. Those are marketing names, but they signify planned transistor density gains and at least slight performance and power efficiency gains. Many larger nodes can be reused to make monolithic 3D chips with further performance gains (and density if you count layers).
There is no magic duopoly. Just trading good and bad luck. AMD got stuck with a badly designed Bulldozer family of architectures and had to make the best of it for a few years. But becoming fabless gave them flexibility that Intel doesn't have right now.
There isn't any need for two x86 companies. If Intel was obliterated, AMD would still have to compete... with ARM. ARM is making inroads into servers, supercomputers, laptops, potentially desktops/workstations if you count Apple's plans, and is already dominating in phones, tablets, TVs, smartwatches, smartglasses, and headsets. If AMD's Epyc didn't improve for a few years, Amazon's Graviton, Ampere's Altra, and Marvell's ThunderX would eat its lunch. If Ryzen Mobile stopped improving, Qualcomm's Snapdragon and others could move in (with x86/x64 emulation where necessary). ARM designs may have to compete with RISC-V, so ARM softened its licensing fees. There's plenty of competition even without Intel in the picture.
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