Intel Kills off the 10nm Process

Charlie Demerjian of Semiaccurate has dropped a bombshell article in which he reports that Intel insiders have proclaimed the current 10nm process is dead. He says that this is a good thing for the company as it was the right thing to do. Assuming that there is truth to this rumor, this means that only TSMC and Samsung are the gatekeepers of the next generation process. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has dropped out of the race. Samsung has begun production with their 7nm EUV process. TSMC announced that they expect their 7nm process to account for 20% of their revenue for 2019. There has been no official statement from Intel so far about the rumor. For several years now SemiAccurate has been saying the the 10nm process as proposed by Intel would never be financially viable. Now we are hearing from trusted moles that the process is indeed dead and that is a good thing for Intel, if they had continued along their current path the disaster would have been untenable. Our moles are saying the deed has finally been done. This isn't to say the road to this point has been easy or straightforward, and the road ahead is even less solid.