Intel CEO says 10nm vision was too aggressive

Intel's 10nm process has been the company's biggest fiasco in a long time. The first chips made on 10nm were supposed to be on the market many years ago but difficulties in bringing this node to the market have kept Intel stuck on 14nm since the introduction of Broadwell in 2014. Instead of a new 10nm architecture, the past couple of years we've seen further refinements of the 14nm Skylake architecture and this allowed AMD to catch up with Intel.

We still don't know exactly why Intel hasn't yet succeeded in commercializing its 10nm process. Speaking at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, CEO Bob Swan once again blamed the 5-year delay of 10nm on the company being "too aggressive":

With 10 nm, Intel targets improved density by as much as 2.7x compared to the last generation of 14 nm transistors. He addressed the five year delay in delivering the 10 nm node being caused by "too aggressive", adding that "... at a time it gets harder and harder, we set more aggressive goal ..." and that's the main reason for the late delivery. Additionally he said that this time, Intel will stay at exactly 2x density improvements over two years with the company's 7 nm node, which is supposed to launch in two years and is already in development.

The first 10nm products from Intel are expected to ship later this year.