Intel 10nm Production Update: Systems on Shelves For Holiday 2019
by Anton Shilov on July 26, 2018 8:50 PM EST
Earlier this year Intel confirmed that it would delay mass production of 10nm CPUs to 2019 due to issues with yields, but did not elaborate on when in 2019 that would be. Late on Thursday Intel finally made a long-awaited clarification: the first systems powered by 10nm CPUs will hit store shelves in the second half of 2019. But there is a catch: 14nm products will still continue to play a big role next year.
Intel is set to start mass production of processors using its 10nm process technology in 2019, and while the company isn't explicitly saying when mass production will begin, it's sounding like that will be in the Q2/Q3 time frame. This being based off of what Intel is saying, which is that they expect to have PCs based on these chips to arrive during the 2019 holiday shopping season. Given the kind of lead-time required to get complete OEM systems on to store shelves, this would mean that mass production on chips needs to start 3 to 6 months sooner than that.
As for said finished systems, what's typically considered the holiday shopping season starts in October or early November. So systems based on Intel’s 10nm CPUs would finally be available in mass quantities starting in Q4 of 2019. Consequently, for more three quarters of next year Intel will continue to rely almost entirely on its products made using its various 14nm process technologies.
It remains to be seen how much time it will take Intel to ramp up production of its 10nm CPUs and when the volume crossover between 14nm and 10nm chips occurs. At present, Intel seems to be optimistic about what it has today and will have tomorrow — a variety of 14nm products. In fact, there is a lot of room for growth here: shipments of Intel’s Xeon Scalable processors accounted for a little less than 50% of Intel’s datacenter revenue in the most recent quarter, so the company will certainly continue to ramp up shipments of these products for many quarters to come, increasing its ASPs and revenue. Keep in mind that Intel’s upcoming Cascade Lake-SP platform will bring support for 3D XPoint-based Optane DC Persistent Memory DIMMs, which will bring in huge earnings opportunities to the company.
Speaking of datacenter products. Murthy Renduchintala, Intel’s chief engineering officer, promised that 10nm “datacenter products” will follow “shortly after” availability of client systems running 10nm CPUs in the late 2019. He did not give any exact timeframes, but stressed that its next-gen Xeon will follow its next-gen client parts quicker usually. Essentially, Intel confirmed this week’s report claiming that the codenamed Ice Lake-SP CPUs may hit the market in Q3 or Q4 of 2020.
Note: Image of a wafer is for illustrative purposes only.
Related Reading:
- Intel Delays Mass Production of 10nm CPUs to 2019
- Intel’s Xeon Scalable Roadmap Leaks: Cooper Lake-SP, Ice Lake-SP Due in 2020
- First 10nm Cannon Lake Laptop Spotted Online: Lenovo Ideapad 330 for $449
- Intel Discloses Plans to Spend $5 Billion on Fab 28 Expansion in Israel
- Intel's 10nm Briefly Appears: Dual Core Cannon Lake in Official Documents
- Intel Mentions 10nm, Briefly
- Intel Displays 10nm Wafer, Commits to 10nm ‘Falcon Mesa’ FPGAs
Source: Intel
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PeachNCream - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Volta is out already isn't it? Not in consumer products, but if I'm not mistaken, Volta is what's powering the Titan V (at admittedly crazy prices) so it isn't like nvidia is doing no work on the next generation chips.Spunjji - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
That CPU isn't faster than a 65W CPU when it's drawing 15W - it's only comparable to desktop chips when it's able to turbo up to 45W with 35W sustained. The fact that it can (in some tests) beat out those Ryzen CPUs isn't dreadfully surprising.1_rick - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
The 8250U, which is only 100MHz base/200MHz turbo slower, is a nice chip, if you're not doing anything that requires sustained performance. I have an Acer with the 8250 and I love it, but start transcoding a video and it's going to drop fast to around 2.0-2.1Ghz and stay there.jospoortvliet - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Well the gap is probably both bigger and smaller than that. AMD is starting with EPIC before rolling out consumer products so Intel might be only months behind there of at all. But in the server market the gap could be a year or more of they are slow with the big dies...caqde - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Exactly and for some reason I have my doubts about when the Icelake based XCC/HCC chips will be released. I'd imaging 2020 around the time Threadripper 4 gets released. Just shorltly before EPYC Milan's successor? If this is the case Intel is in a world of hurt when it comes to the server/HEDT sector's of the computing market.duploxxx - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
the issue is that no OEM will dare to bring an AMD based version in a HW generation (e.g. HP gen11 - gen12) when there is nothing from Intel ready. they will just delay the AMD based solution till there is a intel counterpart. THis due to mass production of there base hw designs and volume. So it will be a lot of back and forth between these OEM to figure out weather they will just go for the same generation with CPU update or bring a full new generation. Knowing the dev and $$$ push from Intel to these OEM I am sure they will put pressure to delay the AMD as much as possible."Cascade Lake-SP platform will bring support for 3D XPoint-based Optane DC Persistent Memory DIMMs". This must be marketing talk right? HP for example has already persistant memory on current Intel. It can only be used for very specific cases. Very limited use and not worth the investment because it also kills of a lot of possible normal memory slots. Intel will need to have a huge memory controller redesign to get it more wide open to choose. ANd way more dimms. THye are behind EPYC already.
Alex_Haddock - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Though AMD has publicly stated Rome will be socket compatible with Naples so a Gen11 wouldn’t be needed. Naturally as an HPE employee I’m not publicly stating our roadmap ( :-p ) but available evidence.There is definitely a lot of interest in persistent memory use cases so I wouldn’t discount Optane; but there are also other routes to persistent memory or making DIMMs themselves effectively persistent. Regardless of technology we are definitely moving to a memory centric computing model so it’s all getting interesting again. Cheers, Alex
edzieba - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Don't count your Zeppelins before they're fabbed. Intel are having problems with 10nm, but it seems foolish to expect that creating 7nm (very similar actual feature sizes barring the finer Cobalt layers at 10nm) large dies will be plain sailing for TSMC, GloFo or Samsung.Cooe - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Except Zeppelin isn't a large die... Not even close. (Vega 7nm, also samples this year otoh... THAT'S a large die [but even then, still much smaller than most large GPU's ala Fiji, P100, or God forbid, V100]). And a theoretical 16c/18t successor on 7nm would be of extremely similar size.Unless Intel suddenly goes modular, your argument is kinda nonsense.
edzieba - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Zeppelin is a large die compared to the SoCs that are currently being fabbed on that process (and not even shipping yet). It is 212mm^2, where even Apple's gargantuan-for-an-SoC A12 is 88mm^2.