Coffee Lake Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cpu,37866.html

Intel's CFO and interim CEO Bob Swan penned an open letter to its customers and partners today outlining the steps it is taking to address a persistent and worsening shortage of 14nm processors.

The shortage has exploded into the public eye as several of Intel's partners have publicly outlined the impacts on their own businesses. Some processors are becoming scarce, while prices are simultaneously rising, particularly in regions outside of the U.S., like EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific).

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/27...ms-at-14nm

There’s undoubtedly truth to some of this. According to Gartner, server revenues and shipments both rose sharply in the first part of the year. Increased demand for server hardware means increased demand for the largest-core count CPUs, which puts pressure on Intel’s manufacturing capacity by requiring the company to build larger dies that result in fewer wafers per die. But Intel has also been stuck in the middle of a 10nm transition that has sapped its manufacturing capacity by effectively idling significant amounts of its overall production capability.

But Swan’s attempt to blame the shortfall on an upturn in the PC industry — which he does — is simply laughable. Writes Swan:
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Why is this claptrap?

Because the consumer PC market grew by 2.7 percent in Q2 2018 after declining roughly 30 percent from 2011-2018. Intel blaming its issues on an unexpected growth in the consumer PC market after a near-30-percent decline over seven years is absurd. The PC market growth might be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it’s not the proximate cause of Intel’s production shortfall. The company made strategic decisions as far as 2014 to idle Fab 42 rather than bringing it up on 14nm. It later opted to convert Fab 42 to 7nm directly back in 2017 rather than ramping it as a 10nm facility. The industry also canceled the push for 450mm wafers several years ago (such technology wouldn’t be online to offset increased silicon demand yet, but avenues that could have increased production at Intel and other foundries long-term were not pursued due to the downturn in PC sales several years ago). But the growth in server and data center sales (where much larger chips are used) and 10nm’s failure to ramp (the node, by introduction, will be at least three years behind schedule) are responsible for Intel’s shortfalls, not some single-digit uptick in consumer PC sales.
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Intel’s letter also states that it will increase an additional $1B into 14nm facilities in Oregon, Arizona, Ireland, and Israel to boost 14nm capacity and that its 10nm production remains on-track for volume insertion in 2019. No updated date was given, which means Q4 2019 is still the official expected introduction date.