If an Intel 10nm transistor fell in the ARM forest

By SemiWiki

August 19, 2016

Intel’s news at IDF this week about partnering with ARM for foundry services on 10nm set off some wild speculation. It’s not a surprise that ARM would enable Intel – they’ve worked together before, ARM is an equal opportunity ecosystem partner, and ARM has publicly announced 10nm cores taped out at TSMC. Of more interest is what is actually could be in this for Intel.

Mark Bohr, Intel’s manufacturing guru, issued pretty much the same pitch he’s used for a couple of years this week: our 10nm process is obviously superior to anyone else’s, based primarily on a 54nm gate pitch claimed to be several years ahead that translates to a density advantage and a lower cost per transistor. That’s important when you need billions of transistors to get something done, like the next-generation Cannonlake microarchitecture.

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