My understanding is that Intel's 14->10nm shrink was the most aggressive in the industry, promising to yield a greater increase in density than the geometry would imply, when usually there's a loss factor and the density increase isn't as good as you'd naively expect.
Even after 10nm was delayed by quite some time, Intel pointed to this and declared they weren't lagging the industry as the shrink was closer to a 1.5 node shrink.
If the 10nm delay was the result of this aggressiveness and Intel was well in to developing 7nm in a similar fashion before it became obvious how 10nm was going to turn out, this may not be a matter of skipping over a single bad apple.
That is exactly what's happening
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/41582/intel-to-hit-10nm-in-20...
1. The metal pitch targeted (36nm) requires Self-Aligned Quad Patterning (SAQP) apparently is very very hard to do without EUV. TSMC is doing 40nm metal pitch and Samsung does 36nm BUT both of them are using EUV.
2. Cobalt https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/525/iedm-2017-isscc-2018-inte...
3. COAG https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/dk2pw7/why_it_is...
Thanks for the explanation; close enough to ELI5
I am still dead convinced we will never see a wide release of a 10nm desktop chip. It will be delayed then cancelled in favor of 7nm.
Server wise, same, limited releases, more smoke and mirrors etc etc
Intel will limp along with 14nm until 7nm. 10nm is utter broken and they can't fix it.