Intel's Robert Swan talks about the 10nm transition

Intel has had a dominant position in the market for many years thanks to its endless tick-tock cycle. However, with the change from 14nm to 10nm, Intel realized too late that they had bitten off more than they could chew.

Intel acknowledges it was too ambitious at 10nm

According to Robert Swan, Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Intel, the company launched in the 10nm transition to try to scale much faster than ever, at a time when most would argue that technology, science and the challenges are more challenging than ever. This led Intel to take a fairly aggressive scale factor, roughly double what competitors do, a very ambitious bet.

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Intel had discovered that its bet could take a revolutionary step instead of the most typical evolutionary one, leaving its competition behind. Instead, the result is the current situation that we are all well aware of, that Intel is far behind its original planned schedule. While that timeline has been revised since then, they are now on track to launch 10nm products in 2019 and 2020. Intel has also made it known that they plan to regain their leadership position when the 10nm transition begins.

When it comes to supply restrictions, Swan explained that they will continue to prioritize their Xeon product line first, with their Core processors and other devices second. Which means those products will see a continuing shortage of supplies in the immediate future, as that ties in with Intel's eventual transition to 10nm.

To help mitigate the problem, Intel has redistributed some of its 14nm equipment, but it is not enough to fully resolve the supply problem. Intel's latest Core 9000 series processors are in minimal supply as they have been depleted virtually everywhere.

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