Intel may have 7nm CPUs in 2018

FUD Zilla provides an update about Intel's process node technology roadmap. The company's rollout of the 14nm process slipped a bit as the node was harder than anticipated, and at its financial analyst day Intel didn't talk about actual time of deployment of future nodes. After 14nm the firm will shrink its chips down to 10nm and 7nm. If all goes as planned, 10nm may arrive in 2016 while 7nm may hit the market in 2018, but these are best-case scenarios. Still, despite Intel's troubles with smaller processes, the chip giant is still doing a lot better than the competition.

However, the competition is doing worse than Intel, as AMD is currently stuck at 28nm with hopes of transitioning to 20nm in 2015. Apple is producing millions of A8 mobile SoCs based on the 20nm manufacturing process and Qualcomm is getting ready to roll out and ship its Snapdragon 810, its first 20nm processor.

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Samsung and GlobalFoundries are supposed to have their 14nm node ready in 2015, while TSMC is doing risk production of 16nm FinFET (16FF), right now with some serious products probably coming in the course of 2015. TSMC's 16nm FinFET process will be complemented by 16nm FinFET Plus (16FF+) in early 2016.