Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Friday July 17 2015, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the hickory-dickory-dock dept.

Intel's "Tick-Tock" strategy of micro-architectural changes followed by die shrinks has officially stalled. Although Haswell and Broadwell chips have experienced delays, and Broadwell desktop chips have been overshadowed by Skylake, delays in introducing 10nm process node chips have resulted in Intel's famously optimistic roadmap missing its targets by about a whole year. 10nm Cannonlake chips were set to begin volume production in late 2016, but are now scheduled for the second half of 2017. In its place, a third generation of 14nm chips named "Kaby Lake" will be launched. It is unclear what improvements Kaby Lake will bring over Skylake.

Intel will not be relying on the long-delayed extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to make 10nm chips. The company's revenues for the last quarter were better than expected, despite the decline of the PC market. Intel's CEO revealed the stopgap 14nm generation at the Q2 2015 earnings call:

"The lithography is continuing to get more difficult as you try and scale and the number of multi-pattern steps you have to do is increasing," [Intel CEO Brian Krzanich] said, adding, "This is the longest period of time without a lithography node change."

[...] But Krzanich seemed confident that letting up on the gas, at least for now, is the right move – with the understanding that Intel will aim to get back onto its customary two-year cycle as soon as possible. "Our customers said, 'Look, we really want you to be predictable. That's as important as getting to that leading edge'," Krzanich said during Wednesday's earnings call. "We chose to actually just go ahead and insert – since nothing else had changed – insert this third wave [with Kaby Lake]. When we go from 10-nanometer to 7-nanometer, it will be another set of parameters that we'll reevaluate this."

Intel Roadmap
Year   Old   New
2014   14nm Broadwell   14nm Broadwell
2015   14nm Skylake   14nm Skylake
2016   10nm Cannonlake   14nm Kaby Lake
2017   10nm "Tock"   10nm Cannonlake
2018   N/A   10nm "Tock"


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 17 2015, @12:58PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday July 17 2015, @12:58PM (#210404) Journal

    There are plenty of concessions that "tick tock" was aggressive and optimistic. Would it be so bad to make a more realistic schedule that takes into account a few basic facts of nature, in particular, the Law of Diminishing Returns? Moore's Law is wrong, the doubling of speed and capacity has to end it's just a question of when, engineers all know that. But does management, really? If asked, they'll say they understand, but their crazy aggressive scheduling belies that. I wonder how many engineers they verbally flogged, how much unpaid overtime they hinted had better be worked, to try to stay on this schedule? Intel is known to be a vicious sweatshop. The excuse is that it's not their fault, it's the market economy and those unforgiving quarterly stock valuations that make them do it.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday July 17 2015, @01:17PM

    by theluggage (1797) on Friday July 17 2015, @01:17PM (#210407)

    Moore's Law is wrong, the doubling of speed and capacity has to end it's just a question of when, engineers all know that. But does management, really?

    Engineers also know that "unconstrained exponential growth" means "look out, she's gonna blow!" However, the whole of modern hypercapitalism is rooted on the delusion that you can have unlimited exponential growth in a closed system. So, its not surprising that management have adopted a corruption of Moore's law as a business model.

    (NB: Moore's law is about transistor density, not specifically speed)