David Kanter (dkanter.delete@this.realworldtech.com) on October 5, 2013 12:41 am wrote:
> Purana Archer (ancientarcher.delete@this.gmail.com) on October 4, 2013 6:38 am wrote:
>
> Moreover, you still fail to understand that 'the ARM camp' is a bunch of folks competing with each other and
> very few actually do much on process tech. When we talk about manufacturing, the only companies that are
> relevant are TSMC, Samsung, GF, and IBM. It doesn't matter how much money Rockchip or Mediatek makes.
>
> This is exactly like the people who talk about "ARM vs. Intel" without realizing
> that those two companies are not really competitors (well perhaps with Quark
> they are, but they aren't competitors in any meaningful sense).

Today. Next year will begin ARM's attempts to slide into the data center with Cortex A57 based designs. It'll be interesting to watch that play out.

> ...
> > Sooner or
> > later they will invest the money in capex and r&d to narrow the tech gap and maybe >overtake Intel.
> >That
> > will happen irrespective.
>
> Tell me when. Do you think it's 2 years? 4 years? 7 years?
>
> David

I'll throw my hat into this discussion with a 6 year prediction on the 7 nm. This is more due to the physics of the scaling being hard than GF/Samsung/TSMC catching up: it will simply take Intel longer to reach each shrink. Broadwell hasn't seen an official delay but Intel's has been wavering on a desktop release and keeping it mobile. There is a consumer Haswell refresh scheduled for desktops next year that'll continue 22 nm. The real question is if Skymont and the shrink to 10 nm occurs on time. I suspect that it'll come 3 to 6 months behind the normal tick-tock cadence. I predict a similar slip with 7 nm coming on line another 3 to 6 months behind schedule. If GF/Samsung/TSMC continue to keep their cadence and rely on Intel to bare the expense of funding for new tools, they'll only be a few months behind Intel in getting to 7 nm.

One thing I don't see is any other company leap ahead of Intel. The other companies don't seem eager to take charge in funding new tool development, especially as foundries are bumping into physical limitations.