Over the last few years we have witnessed the postponement of successive premieres at Intel many times – first, lithography was implemented with delay 14 nm, then the times of reheating 4-core cutlets came. In the meantime, the 10 nm process proved to be a complete failure, as evidenced by the Cannonlake series, which was introduced quietly and just as quickly removed from memory. Last year’s Ice Lake processors were far from perfect. Only this year’s Tiger Lake systems turned out to be noticeably better, but also in this case it is difficult to talk about the success of the lithography 10 nm SuperFin. There are also problems with the implementation of the Sunny Cove architecture to servers and more and more problems with the Ponte Vecchio accelerator. According to the latest reports, further delays of further premieres and a change of the CEO at Intel are planned.

Information has appeared on the network suggesting further Intel problems with the implementation of 7 nm lithography and fine-tuning the process 10 nm. There are further delays in both processors and graphics cards.

There are disturbing information on the network about Intel’s problems, which concern both the refinement of 10 nm lithography as well as the implementation of more advanced, 7 nm technological process. According to informants, 10 nm lithography still does not fully meet expectations, despite the fact that 10 nm SuperFin is much more polished than the base process. OEMs are not getting the required number of Tiger Lake generation processors 11, which delays the introduction of new laptop models to the market. In addition, Intel is expected to continue to face problems in the server sector, where Ice Lake-SP chips still fall short of expectations in terms of performance and energy efficiency. Officially, the new Xeons are expected to debut in the first quarter of the year, but unofficially there is talk of another delay between the middle of the second quarter and the beginning of Q3 2021. So we are talking about the interval between May and July. The next generation of Sapphire Rapids server chips is to have an even greater delay. Instead of the second quarter 2021, there is talk of an annual slip – until Q2 2022 of the year.

If the information about further delays Ice Lake-SP and Sapphire Rapids find confirmation in fact, it will be an extremely difficult situation for Intel. A competing company – AMD – attacks this market very strongly. Originally, Ice Lake-SP chips were meant to compete with AMD EPYC Rome. Meanwhile, the next generation of EPYC Milan will be released in a few months, and Intel still does not have any competitive processors. The annual delay of the Sapphire Rapids generation will mean that these systems will have to compete with AMD EPYC Genoa, already based on the rebuilt Zen 4 architecture. .

Yet worse news comes in the topic of the 7 nm technological process. The implementation of this lithography was officially delayed a few months ago. According to unofficial information, 7 nm will be finally delayed for another 6 – 12 months, until 2023 year. This will affect, for example, the Intel Ponte Vecchio accelerator, based on the Xe-HP architecture. Originally, most of the GPU elements were to be produced in Intel factories in 7 nm lithography. Most likely, the production of the entire accelerator will be transferred to TSMC. Intel also plans to transfer the production of other chips – in this case it is said that part of the orders will be allocated to TSMC and some to Samsung. All these problems are expected to lead to another CEO change at Intel – a decision on this subject is expected in the first quarter 2021 of the year. However, we emphasize once again that all the above information is unofficial. Intel has not addressed them in any way at present.

Source: Notebookcheck