Intel Scraps 10nm for Desktop

Source:
Intel Scraps 10nm for Desktop, Brazen it Out with 14nm Skylake Till 2022?

In a shocking piece of news, Intel has reportedly scrapped plans to launch its 10 nm "Ice Lake" microarchitecture on the client desktop platform. The company will confine its 10 nm microarchitectures, "Ice Lake" and "Tiger Lake" to only the mobile platform, while the desktop platform will see derivatives of "Skylake" hold Intel's fort under the year 2022! Intel gambles that with HyperThreading enabled across the board and increased clock-speeds, it can restore competitiveness with AMD's 7 nm "Zen 2" Ryzen processors with its "Comet Lake" silicon that offers core-counts of up to 10.

"Comet Lake" will be succeeded in 2021 by the 14 nm "Rocket Lake" silicon, which somehow combines a Gen12 iGPU with "Skylake" derived CPU cores, and possibly increased core-counts and clock speeds over "Comet Lake." It's only 2022 that Intel will ship out a truly new microarchitecture on the desktop platform, with "Meteor Lake." This chip will be built on Intel's swanky 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication node, and possibly integrate CPU cores more advanced than even "Willow Cove," possibly "Golden Cove."
*www.techpowerup.com/img/mF9rv2igCMdWBms6_thm.jpg
The HardwareLuxx article making these explosive revelations attributes the sudden change in Intel's plans to the company not being able to scale clock-speeds of "Ice Lake" high enough to establish product leadership. It feels "Skylake," which has IPC parity with "Zen 2," has enough scalability and clock-speed headroom to stay competitive with AMD at high clock-speeds. The company will augment next-generation uncore (revamped memory controllers, support for PCIe gen 4.0, Gen12 iGPU, etc.), with "Skylake" CPU cores, over time. Other areas where Intel could grow its mainstream desktop silicon is cache rebalancing similar to its HEDT chips, and implementing the Mesh Interconnect to maintain low latencies as core-counts enter two-figures.

Interestingly, 10 nm "Ice Lake" remains on Intel's enterprise roadmap, where the company appears more desperate not to cede market-share to AMD, especially as businesses around the world set their 5G plans rolling, springing a cycle of hardware updates in the data-center. 2020 could see the introduction of Xeon Scalable processors based on 10 nm "Ice Lake" microarchitecture with "Sunny Cove" CPU cores. In 2021, the company will introduce the "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon processor with even more cores and larger I/O connectivity, spearheaded with PCI-Express gen 5.0.

Intel: Yes, There Will be 10nm Desktop CPUs (Updated) | Tom's Hardware

Guys, can we please provide important bits of the articles on the forum and then link to article as source. I have been seeing lots of links here on TDF without the summary of the article. Let's just follow the old rules just like the first post here, cause it is neat

Intel confirms 10nm Desktop Processor plans with a vague statement

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So, are they scraping it or is it still good to go? Didn't check those links.

In what seemed like important news for desktop enthusiasts, a rumor came out today that Intel had canceled all plans for 10nm desktop processors, leaving a void until the company would introduce 7nm desktop processors in 2022. However, Intel has now officially denied the rumor, stating that it still has plans to bring chips with the 10nm process to the desktop.

The rumor was published on Monday by German site HardwareLUXX. The site reported that it had received information from “insider circles” with a reportedly proven track record. The source claimed that there would be no 10nm desktop CPUs from Intel – possibly because the 10nm process does not deliver the required frequency for a desktop part. Instead, the company would supposedly focus on 7nm for the desktop market. The source said the first 7nm desktop processors would come in 2022.

That suggests that after seven years of 14nm products on the desktop based on the Skylake architecture, Intel in one generation would move the desktop two nodes down, on what could be the fourth architecture the company has introduced after Skylake.

On first sight, the rumor appeared to have some merit. Ice Lake-U does have lower clock speeds than the 14nm parts like Whiskey Lake-U and Comet Lake-U. That would be especially detrimental to single-threaded performance on the desktop, although frequencies might still increase as Intel moves to 10nm++. Moreover, a roadmap leaked earlier this year revealed that Intel had indeed planned another 14nm generation on the desktop with Rocket Lake-S, after the upcoming Comet Lake-S processors with 10 cores.

On the other hand, the rumor went against a previous statement by Intel’s executive management. When asked at last year’s Architecture Day if Intel had plans to ever release a high-end desktop CPU on 10nm, chief architect Raja Koduri simply answered "Yes." So if Intel did have plans for such a product, today’s rumor would indicate that Intel had scrapped those plans.

Intel provided the following short statement in response to Tom's Hardware, refuting the rumor:

"We continue to make great progress on 10nm, and our current roadmap of 10nm products includes desktop."

Intel Rumored to Launch 10th Gen Comet Lake-S Desktop CPUs to Combat Ryzen 3000 in Q1 2020

If they indeed have scrapped, AMD will dominate further.

Intel introduces their 10nm Tremont CPU architecture

AMD has finally done it. Outclassed Intel finally. Since the Athlon days in 2004-06, AMD never saw profits.
Check this:AMD achieves highest quarterly revenue since 2005 due to solid EPYC, Ryzen and Radeon sales

Profit =/= performance. But yeah, AMD has been in a pretty good shape since releasing Ryzen. Where AMD beats Intel is in cost to performance ratio.

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