Intel 7nm EUV doing great, 10nm node may be short-lived

Speaking at Nasdaq's 39th Investor Conference, Intel chief engineering officer Murthy Renduchintala revealed the chip giant's 7nm EUV process is doing great. Development is well underway and it's implied that 7nm products may hit the market sooner than expected, suggesting the long-delayed 10nm may end up being a short-lived node. Next year we'll see mass production of 10nm products, client CPUs will be first with datacenter products following a bit later.

Intel claims 7nm is developed by a separate team and largely a separate effort, unrelated to the 10nm struggles:

“7 nm for us is a separate team and largely a separate effort. We are quite pleased with our progress on 7 nm. In fact, very pleased with our progress on 7 nm. I think that we have taken a lot of lessons out of the 10 nm experience as we defined that and defined a different optimization point between transistor density, power and performance and schedule predictability. […] So, we are very, very focused on getting 7 nm out according to our original internal plans.”

With 7nm, Intel is moving back to a 2x scaling factor, which suggests a rather extensive use of EUV:

“One thing I will say is that as you look at 7 nm, for us this is really now a point in time where we will get EUV back into the manufacturing matrix, and therefore, I think, that will give us a degree of back to the traditional Moore’s Law cadence that we were really talking about,”

“[With 7 nm] we are going back to more like a 2X scaling factor […] and then really moving forward with that goal.”

Via: AnandTech