> Intel expects to be on 2 year cadence with its manufacturing process node technology, starting with 10nm in 2019 and moving to 7nm EUV in 2021
Not to say it could never happen, but given how many years Intel has spent on 10nm with it always been 'next year' tech year after year, 7nm in 2021 seems overly optimistic for me.
I guess time will tell if they got it right this time.
It seems reasonably likely that they will succeed. Intel's 10nm and its 7nm are very different beasts with 7nm arguably being a lot simpler thanks to EUV and a 2x density transistor improvement goal (vs 2.7x for 10nm). The lack of EUV and very high density goals for 10nm meant they had to do a lot of multi-patterning which ended up screwing their yields. That plus the uncharted waters of using cobalt interconnects rather than copper meant it was basically Intel getting overconfident and being too ambitious for their own good.
There were also a whole laundry list of other technologies Intel was trying to put into 10nm. Contact over active gate, COAG, was heavily used in the GPU portion of the die and its failure is why none of the very few 10nm parts released in 2018 had any GPU at all.
As far as I know there is no reason to think that Intel's problems with 10nm process have effect to new processes they are developing for 7nm. Core technologies change and missing a step is something that might happen to others in the future.
In fact GlobalFoundries also failed their 7LP (7nm). As a result they stopped pathfinding and research for 5 nm and 3 nm and quit the race. They are moving to more specialized chips.
Fab cost for new process has grown each year for decades. Now it's something like $20 billion. Stakes grow at same time as things get more hairy and complicated 'down there'.
Not to say it could never happen, but given how many years Intel has spent on 10nm with it always been 'next year' tech year after year, 7nm in 2021 seems overly optimistic for me.
I guess time will tell if they got it right this time.