> Intel launched new 14nm processors last month, 5.5 years after introducing their first 14nm processors.
> Meanwhile, TSMC's 7nm process has been shipping since Q3 2018, and their EUV-based N7+ process is now in mass production
So, to make this an apples-to-apples comparison: when did TSMC stop shipping new products on prior nodes? ;)
You can still go out and buy a new-production Ryzen 1600 AF chip right now, you know. AMD did not even finish releasing their 7nm lineup until basically a few weeks ago, Renoir products just started shipping last month.
Ice Lake actually beat the comparable AMD/TSMC chips to market by like, 8 months or something. They've been around in volume since like, november. I went to Costco before last thanksgiving and almost half the laptops had Ice Lake.
AMD can ship desktop processors sooner because they've architecturally managed to reduce the chiplet to smaller than the size of a phone SOC. Comparing apples to apples, or more specifically monolithic mobile processor vs monolithic mobile processor, TSMC isn't that far ahead.
Or for another data point, TSMC's big-chip 7nm yields are so bad that NVIDIA is disabling 15% of the processor on the Ampere GA100 even for the datacenter market that will be paying $25k a chip or something stupid.
TSMC is ahead, sure, but not as much as people want them to be. The ability to make phone SOCs and 70mm2 chiplets successfully doesn't mean they've got 7nm completely nailed.
You shouldn't ignore the fact that Apple's larger 7nm SoC has the same die size as Ice Lake, and has been shipping a lot longer. To the extent that TSMC's 7nm has been confined to small, low-power chips, Intel's 10nm has the same problem but worse.
> Meanwhile, TSMC's 7nm process has been shipping since Q3 2018, and their EUV-based N7+ process is now in mass production
So, to make this an apples-to-apples comparison: when did TSMC stop shipping new products on prior nodes? ;)
You can still go out and buy a new-production Ryzen 1600 AF chip right now, you know. AMD did not even finish releasing their 7nm lineup until basically a few weeks ago, Renoir products just started shipping last month.
Ice Lake actually beat the comparable AMD/TSMC chips to market by like, 8 months or something. They've been around in volume since like, november. I went to Costco before last thanksgiving and almost half the laptops had Ice Lake.
AMD can ship desktop processors sooner because they've architecturally managed to reduce the chiplet to smaller than the size of a phone SOC. Comparing apples to apples, or more specifically monolithic mobile processor vs monolithic mobile processor, TSMC isn't that far ahead.
Or for another data point, TSMC's big-chip 7nm yields are so bad that NVIDIA is disabling 15% of the processor on the Ampere GA100 even for the datacenter market that will be paying $25k a chip or something stupid.
TSMC is ahead, sure, but not as much as people want them to be. The ability to make phone SOCs and 70mm2 chiplets successfully doesn't mean they've got 7nm completely nailed.