Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

The latest roadmap from TSMC now points to 2023 for 3nm. This actually put Intel in the same time frame as TSMC. So incidentally both Intel and TSMC will be on 4nm in 2022, and 3nm in 2023.

Note: Intel 4nm is a Full, new Node while TSMC 4nm is an optimisation of their 5nm.

Of course the roadmap and time table from Intel is often not a reliable indicator and also doesn't tell you whether it is product shipment or if they are only ramping. My guess is that Intel is running as fast as they can to reach those target. That is also not including capacity difference with node from both companies.

I think Intel under Pat Gelsinger is making the same transition as Andy Grove did to during his era.

I'm getting kinda lost, it's almost 2022 already

did Intel skip 7 and 5nm?

They renamed their other nodes to cover those (and to better align with the rest of the industry).

They changed their branding. Their 10nm node was renamed to Intel 7, their 7nm is now Intel 4. Since amount of nanometers doesn't really mean anything anymore that's good PR strategy that nicely represents state of their nodes because density on Intel 7 and TSMC 7nm is pretty similar anyway.

I believe Intel didn't strictly rename Intel 10nm to Intel 7, it's a refinement of Intel 10nm that is Intel 7 (they were previously calling it 10nm+ if I recall correctly).

Shouldn't it be 10nm-? :)

Intel rebranded their x nm to be TSMC's y nm. This may seem a bit subversive but it's not ridiculously unreasonable as the nanometre figures are complete bullshit, and the density measures are also sufficiently synthetic as to be mostly useless when comparing a similar node anyway (i.e. there's more to it than just shoving transistors on a chip)

There are very interesting ways that we could compare architectures, but it would never get past the marketing department and it might reveal capabilities that they would rather have a secret, so we are stuck with a single meaningless number.

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