Intel is reportedly deviating from its original plan to release products that incorporate the 7nm process technology from 2020 to 2022. Intel itself has not commented on the matter; instead, the folks at Motley Fool were the first ones to notice the possible change of plans through a job listing from India.
Before that, it’s worth noting that despite these changes, there seem to be no indications that it will affect the imminent release of Intel’s 10nm process technology products by 2019; which are broken down into three different technologies: 10-nanometer, 10-nanometer+, and 10-nanometer++. Knowing this, it wouldn’t make much sense, then, for Intel to release a new product with smaller process technology merely a year after releasing a 10nm tech.
That aside, the original job listing reads:
“The India Lab specifically, in collaboration with MRL-US and Intel product architecture teams worldwide, will spearhead the research and advanced development of Microprocessor Cores in the 2020 and beyond timeframe. By conceiving of and prototyping radical approaches, the Lab will aim to deliver much greater CPU power and area efficiency while still delivering industry-leading performance. The microarchitecture and design of these advanced CPUs will be aggressively co-optimized with Intel’s sub-10nm technology nodes deep into the next decade.”
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The 2020 date in the listing has now been changed to “2022 and beyond timeframe”. One fundamental and obvious fact about shrinking technologies is that the smaller it is, the harder it gets to manufacture. Which would probably contribute to a higher consumption of caffeine by folks at Intel’s process technology R&D department too.
“Intel’s recently released 7th generation Kaby Lake processors are built using the 14nm FinFet process. More on that here.”
So it wouldn’t be too wrong of Intel to delay the release of its 7nm technologies. Hopefully, it’ll give the company more time to create products that will be able to utilise the full potential of the 7nm process technology.
(Source: Motley Fool, TweakTown, Fudzilla)
