It’s official: Intel is playing catch-up

Intel is “investing to recapture process leadership going forward”, said CEO Bob Swan on an earnings call with investors. The truth had to come out, eventually: Intel is no longer king of the hill in integrated circuit technology. Even if the company starts delivering on its promises and 10nm volume shipments will get going for real, AMD’s equivalent 7nm chips have been in production at TSMC for some time now.

Intel’s 10nm products were originally slated to move into production late 2015. When the chips never appeared on the market in 2016, the processor maker explained it was shuffling some parameters of Moore’s Law around. The additional development time is accompanied by a proportional increase in density and performance, Intel assured. In other words: there will be no net deviation from the historical trend.