INTEL’S ROCKY ROAD MAP

Delays bedevil 10nm and 7nm chips

WHEN AMD HAS something big in the pipeline, Intel always manages to seem busy, too. In the last month, we’ve had a slew of launches and announcements: 7nm chips are go for 2021—it’s official— which sounds like good news, but isn’t. Intel is lagging. There have been huge problems getting its 10nm chips going, which were to fill the gap. So much so that there have been rumors that Cannon Lake has been shelved, which Intel denies.

Part of the problem is that Intel has traditionally tied new microarchitecture designs to die shrinks, which has left it producing numerous iterations of 14nm designs when the shrink stalled. From now on, it plans to design architectures that are portable between die sizes. The first of these is Sunny Cove, and we have just had our first proper look at a block diagram of this in the Ice Lake chips at their launch at CES. This should be taking on Zen 2. Intel promises twice the graphics performance, 2.5–3.5 times the AI performance, and three times the wireless speeds of Coffee Lake. We’ll also get to see Intel’s Gen11 integrated graphics, which should be good: It’s the first fruit from its hiring of ex-Radeon architect Raja Koduri.

The first chips won’t be desktop chips, but laptop parts; the desktop version could be pushed back to 2021. Mapped out beyond Ice Lake is Willow Cove, with improved cache, security, and other optimizations, due in 2020. These popped up in a leaked road map for 2020 featuring Tiger Lake chips, again mobile.

Intel has also fleshed out its 9th Gen 14nm Coffee Lake chips, with tweaks such as better thermal handling, more cores, and improved memory support. But supply issues continue to bite. This won’t be the last gasp for Skylake: Comet Lake is still to come. These 14nm, 10th Gen chips are due late this year, or early next, and are expected to squeeze 10 cores into a space originally housing four.