Bangkok August 2020

BUSINESS SUPPLEMENT
“Bits n Bytes”
STEVE DICKENS
FOODMART
SUPERMARKET
On Thappraya Road, Jomtien
316/3 Moo 12, Nongprue, Banglamung, Chonburi 20150
FOODMART
Offers a wide selection of the best foods and beverages
from around the world at reasonable prices.
FOODMART
Is located directly on Thappraya Road north of Thepprasit Road,
opposite Pan Pan Restaurant.
Tel: 038-303 467
Intel says the production of its
next-generation chips will be set
back until 2022, following years of
delays getting its current-generation
chips on sale.The company
said it was exploring "contingency
plans" such as having third-party
manufacturers produce some of
its products.
In June, Apple said it would
transition its Mac computers away
from Intel processors and design
its own chips. Industry experts are
saying that Intel are risking leaving
a gap for competitors to step
into.
The reason? Well Intel said
it had identified a "defect" in its
manufacturing process that led to
the new delay.
So what exactly is a next-generation
chip?
Chip-makers try to miniaturise
their technology and processes
so that they can pack more transistors
on to a single silicon chip
and doing so typically creates
faster processors which are more
energy-efficient. This can give
smartphones and laptops a longer
battery life, and reduce energy
consumption by data centres.
Intel's current-generation chips
are described as 10nm (nanometre)
chips, and its next-generation
will be 7nm chips.These numbers
used to be a measure of the tiny
spaces in between transistors on
a chip, but today they are simply
marketing terms.
"Today, the metric commonly
used by the experts to compare
two different technologies is the
transistor density," said Dr Ian
Cutress, senior CPU editor of the
technology news site AnandTech,
which reported Intel's announcement.
Intel's most dense 10nm
designs are broadly equivalent to
the most dense 7nm designs by
rival chip-maker TSMC, he said.
Is Intel's delay significant?
Well, a delay in producing
next-generation chips could give
rivals a head start.
There are two main parts to Intel's
business: it designs computer
chips and manufactures them.
Most of its rivals only do one or
the other.
TSMC simply manufactures
chips designed by other companies,
such as AMD and Apple.
"During most of the 2010s,
one of Intel's key marketable industry-leading
features was that
it was ahead of its competitors in
manufacturing technology," said
DrCutress. "In recent years, Intel
has been unable to develop new
leading manufacturing technologies
on its original timescales."
While Intel's current-generation
10nm chips were delayed by
more than two years, TSMC was
shipping its equivalent 7nm chips
in bulk to major customers such
as Apple, AMD, Huawei and Qualcomm.
AMD already has a generation
of current-generation chips
on sale, Intel has no answer for
similar products in desktop computing,
and is only promising a
small launch of its first generation
10nm server processors by the
end of the year.
With all the delays Intel had on
its 10nm production, its new 7nm
chips were meant to solve that
issue and make 10nm more of a
footnote in Intel's history. The delay
to 7nm implies Intel is having
issues with the development.
If Intel fails to execute properly,
then it leaves a large hole for its
main competition to step into, as
well as eroding 20 years of confidence
in Intel's ability to deliver
high-performance and high-efficiency
computing products, which
would be nothing short of disastrous
for Intel
Steve Dickens
has worked in managerial and consultancy
roles for over 40 years with international technology
companies, 15 of which have been
here in Thailand. He can be contacted at
stevedickens@hotmail.com
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