Hacker News Reader

Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

“Because of the production difficulties with 10nm, Intel has revised its density target back to 2.4X [from 2.7X] for the transition to the 7nm node.”

Ouch. A day late and a dollar short.

They claim that this new node will still be better than TSMC’s new node, but we are now in leapfrog mode aren’t we? Where you have a year advantage on your competitor and then they will have the best tech but you’ll be halfway to unseating them again?

View on HN

And I bet they just mean TSMC's 7nm node there, but that's very misleading. By the time Intel has its 7nm node ready, TSMC will be ahead with its 5nm node.

That’s possible, but intel’s 7nm is likely to be better than TSMC’s 5nm regardless

Considering the troubles they have with 10nm and the fact that everyone else will have more expertise with EUV lithography than them (Intel hasn't even planned to use EUV until 5nm), that seems quite doubtful at this point.

Per the article:

> The company will switch to EUV at 7nm.

Can Intel work apace on their 7nm node when the previous one is behind schedule by two years, or does this derail those plans?

I'm no expert on this but I do know that their 7nm will switch to their long in-development EUV lithography process. I'd assume the work on 10nm is completely separate from their work on 7nm (there are even rumors that they'll just abandon 10nm if 7nm is ready before they work out the problems with 10nm).

They are effectively just code names. Intel's 10nm ~ TSMC's 7nm

I understand, and that's how they should be comparing them. I was saying Intel likely compared its 7nm with TSMC's 7nm, where of course Intel would "win". But by the time it "wins" that, they won't compete with TSMC's 7nm in the market anymore, but with its 5nm.

It's just a strange way to look at it. Intel's naming convention is more honest and closer to traditional measurements and of course each marketing dept. will choose to say they are the best in the world across all processes, regardless of whatever the competition calls their feature size.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com