Intel's 7nm advance as planned, would arrive sooner than expected

Intel's 10nm manufacturing node was originally planned to begin mass production in the second half of 2016, but is hardly used by the company today. Currently, the process is used to produce only a handful of CPUs, with high-volume manufacturing slated for later in 2019. Intel suffered from 10nm process delays for several years, which had a significant impact on the line of products of the company and its business. However, Intel's 10nm may be a short-lived node, as the company's 7nm technology is on track to be introduced in accordance with its original schedule.

Intel has far fewer problems developing 7nm with EUV

Intel said it set too aggressive transistor scale density targets for its 10nm manufacturing process, which is why its development had problems. Intel's 10nm manufacturing technology relies exclusively on deep ultraviolet lithography (DUVL), with lasers operating at a wavelength of 193nm. To enable the fine feature sizes that Intel set out to achieve at 10nm, the process had to make heavy use of multi-patterning. According to Intel, one problem with the process was precisely its intensive use of multipatification.

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In contrast, Intel's 7nm production technology will utilize extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) with a laser wavelength of 13.5nm for selected layers, reducing the use of multi-patterning for certain metal layers, and therefore simplifying production times and shortening cycles. As it seems, the 7nm manufacturing process had been developed separately from 10nm technology, and by different equipment. As a result, its development is underway and it is projected to enter HVM according to Intel's unannounced roadmap, according to the company.

Intel reaffirmed that the company plans to start HVM production of the customer's CPUs using its 10nm process technology in 2019, and data center products will follow shortly thereafter. That said, it is clear that Intel is not skipping any of its already announced 10nm products, but it implies that its 7nm products may hit the market sooner than we might expect.

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