Image: Intel
Just abandoned by Cupertino, Intel really didn’t need the delay in its 7nm process that was announced late last week.
Just a year ago, when Intel finally killed the demons that had been slowing its 10nm process and keeping it away from most buyers for years. But now we know that the first 7nm processor will only hit the streets in early 2023. Like the 10nm process, it will start in data centers.
Intel CEO Bob Swan said last week that 7nm was 12 months behind schedule and that the company could consider using external foundries to stay on track. He also said that Intel was planning more 10nm-based products.
It really sounds like a repeat of the 14nm procession of products that Intel would launch in years past.
In those days, Intel was far enough from its rivals to have some time to burn. This time, he doesn’t have that luxury, and the computer industry is changing under his feet. The chip giant knows this and recently announced its Lakefield hybrid processors that combine low and high power cores in the way that Arm has long done.
The other difference is that in 2020 AMD is far from being a company too. AMD’s recent Ryzen announcements have cheerfully bragged about its performance by watt numbers and are finally outperforming Intel on a wide range of benchmarks.
“What you would have seen if you wanted to look [these benchmarks] A few years ago, it is that AMD across the board would have been a substantial deficit, “AMD chief commercial business customer Matthew Unangst said in May.
“When we looked at Cinebench 1Q, which used to be a big double-debit deficit in performance, we’ve pretty much eliminated that deficit and are very close to parity.”
While AMD is parading around its 7nm process, it’s worth noting that not all manufacturing measurements are created in the same way, and its 7nm is not necessarily my 7nm, nor is Intel’s 7nm. It is more of a marketing term now than any reflection of absolute physical size.
See Also: Delayed 7nm Intel Products; first 7nm client CPU expected in late 2022 or 2023
In 2017, Intel claimed that its 10nm process would have twice the density of transistors than its competitors, and last year Swan said that Intel 7nm would be the equivalent of the 5nm process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) used. for iPhone chips. The numbers comparing Intel 10nm with TSMC 7nm certainly lend credence to this view.
This could be a viable situation for Intel if the world remained static, but Samsung has been talking about its 3nm process for a year, and while volume production is reported to arrive in 2022 after a COVID-induced delay, the Korean giant will. They have their foundries running in a new Gate-All-Around process before an Intel 7nm processor is available for sale.
Last week a potential wild card came in the world of chips when Bloomberg reported that Nvidia was considering purchasing Arm from Softbank. If an agreement were reached, Intel would eventually have to face another competitor with superior graphics processing credentials in the CPU space.
Meanwhile, on the wings, RISC-V continues to advance as well.
Clearly, the sharks are spinning and Intel is facing an existential crisis, right? Not quite. The company also released its second-quarter earnings last week and posted revenue growth of 20% to $ 19.7 billion for the quarter. Of that number, $ 9.5 billion came from the PC business, representing an increase of 7%.
If that’s an existential threat in the midst of a global pandemic, many other companies would love to come to such an agreement.
The other factor in Intel’s favor is that, outside of the performance per watt, the raw performance numbers are no longer as crucial as they used to be. Apple gives Qualcomm an absolute slap when it comes to the performance of the mobile chip, and yet the regular user isn’t aware, as the silicon in most Android devices is good enough.
See also: Former Apple executive: Apple’s Arm-based silicon will accelerate the end of the Microsoft Windows-Intel duopoly
The threat to Intel is not so much going bankrupt, but rather losing its precious leadership position, whether real or perceived, which has allowed it to have healthy margins and a reliable ecosystem of support. As a user of AMD hardware sometimes, issues tend to pop up every now and then, showing that support isn’t there compared to the full Wintel experience, but the gap is closing.
This is before Cupertino launches an Apple Silicon ad blitz that convinces the public to think that non-Intel chips in Macs will make them the fastest, best, or any barrel full of adjectives Apple decides to throw at it.
To stay on top, Intel will need to pull a 10nm rabbit out of its hat to stay in-game to compete with 7nm and younger processes from other foundries.
Intel is in real danger of losing its place on the pedestal, a place it has grown accustomed to for many decades.
ZDNET MONDAY MORNING OPENER
The Monday Morning Opener is our opening salvo for the tech week. Since we have a global site, this editorial publishes Monday at 8:00 a.m. M. AEST in Sydney, Australia, which is at 6:00 p.m. M. Eastern Sunday Time in the US Written by a member of the ZDNet Global Editorial Board, which is comprised of our top editors in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America.
