Jouni Osmala (josmala.delete@this.cc.hut.fi) on August 20, 2014 4:33 am wrote:
> > > I agree on you with ISA effect between ARM and Intel, but for process there is
> > > no-one like Intel, and that's the strong enough force that makes cows fly.
> > > They put more money on process development than anyone for
> > > decades they probably got the best process engineers
> > > since everyone in the field knows if you want to be ahead of everyone else go to Intel. There are plenty of
> > > parameters to tune with different trade offs then you should
> > > consider the pipeline between starting to develop
> > > a manufacturing process to having product at the hands of
> > > the customers, that pipeline is quite long and people
> > > make announcements at different stages of that pipeline
> > > and you have clearly mistaken those stages. Intel got
> > > improved transistors in their 22nm process and now others are
> > > aiming in their 14nm process to have same improvement
> > > in their transistors, but Intel got nice improvement over
> > > their 22nm transistors. So in the end, the manufacturing
> > > process might actually be the thing that keeps x86 ahead of ARM indefinitely.
> > >
> > > As for delay of Broadwell what I think has happened is that 22nm has really good yields and
> > > 14nm yield improvement curve changed temporarily its trajectory to not improving as fast as
> > > traditionally it has and they had to put on hold the retooling for 14nm process, and then they
> > > got it back few months later. And that was quite close to point in which they would start converting
> > > for mass production but just below it. Now if everyone else has same problem, then there is
> > > bigger delay between some production and high volume complex chip than normally.
> > >
> >
> > Yes, Intel has shined in manufacturing and it still has a leading gap over rest of foundries, but my point
> > is that the gap has been reduced in recent times. E.g. Broadwell-EP on 14nm FinFET is scheduled for Q4 2015
> > and ARM SoCs on 16nm FinFET are scheduled for 2016. Intel will have only a half-node advantage this time.
>
> Those ARM SoC:s probably are more Comparable to Broadwell-Y than Broadwell-EP in
> terms of how good defect density you need in order to get reasonable yield.
>
> What different players have disclosed from their 14nm&16nm processes Intel is having significantly
> better 14nm process than anyone else. Others probably need their 10nm process to compete
> with Intel 14nm process. Actually the 14nm intel process is such advantage over competition
> that it just made me scared that future might become all Intel.
>
> Everyone else is investing heavily to get the features Intel already has in its process
> while Intel is investing heavily to get improved version of it, that is Intel is reaping
> the benefit of momentum it has already build up in its process development. Others are spending
> billions to get features Intel spent billions on previous generation process.
> Also TSMC needs to spend more to get all the variants of its process done and to
> get higher momentum than Intel to catch up but we don't see that happening.

What I see is that a few years ago Intel introduced the crappy Atom with a load of fanfare saying it was going to crush ARM, and it looked like a very reasonable competitor - but it didn't compete. Last year it introduced the far better Bay Trail processors to crush ARM but is spending more in a quarter on 'contra-revenue' and getting even less revenue. And next year it looks like it is putting variants of its Haswell architecture into the fray. Will Intel have to give contra-revenue away with its Haswell class cores? And in 2016 or 2017 will they be giving contra-revenue in servers as well and what will that do to their contra-contra-revenue and prospects for the future?