Re:Intel vs GlobalFoundries at the leading edge
by dogma1138 on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:54PM
(#15953607)
Intended or not both of them adopted 10nm which is closer to Intel’s 14nm not counting the fact that they neither can produce large or power hungry chips on either process.
GF is skipping EUV for the initial 7nm process and based on the issues they and Intel have been having with masks and patterning under EUV I’m not sure if they’ll be on track for EUV in 2019.
In either case it would be very interesting to see what Intel is going to end up releasing it might be in lithography hell with 10nm or it might be overblown.
Intel’s 14nm++ and +++ processes atm do not have competition and it’s not clear just how much it would matter if GF moves to 7nm before Intel atm.
Intel’s biggest problem is less with their process and more with their roadmap as it seems that they want to launch 14nm+++, 10nm and 10nm+ products all within a similar time window with a huge overlap. If I was an OEM atm it would be rather confused.
Also Samsung's first 7nm node will use EUV lithography, which may be a bit too costly for most chip makers, and that may have played a role in developing the stop-gap 10nm process, too. We'll likely see most of the 7nm users switch to GloFo and TSMC until Samsung lowers costs/increases yield for its 7nm process.