Wednesday, September 25th 2019
Intel's 14nm Chip Shortage Continues
Intel is constantly having troubles with its silicon manufacturing business lately. Firstly the late delivery of 10 nm, then the shortage of 14 nm chips that started all the way back in 2018. Despite the making of $1 Billion investment into extending its 14 nm production capacity, there seems to be no end of troubles in sight.
According to sources close to DigiTimes, 14 nm production has fallen short of demand again and will likely cause many notebook manufacturers to delay their products to 2020. Most likely victim of this delay is the newly announced 10th generation mobile CPUs codenamed Comet Lake. Those CPUs were supposed to be built using Intel's "14nm++" revision of 14 nm technology which targets higher CPU frequencies and improved efficiency, but most likely due to continued shortage of 14nm, there will be only a few notebooks powered by these chips. As the source suggests, many manufacturers are likely to delay the launch of their products to 2020, when this situation is supposed to be resolved.
Source:
DigiTimes
According to sources close to DigiTimes, 14 nm production has fallen short of demand again and will likely cause many notebook manufacturers to delay their products to 2020. Most likely victim of this delay is the newly announced 10th generation mobile CPUs codenamed Comet Lake. Those CPUs were supposed to be built using Intel's "14nm++" revision of 14 nm technology which targets higher CPU frequencies and improved efficiency, but most likely due to continued shortage of 14nm, there will be only a few notebooks powered by these chips. As the source suggests, many manufacturers are likely to delay the launch of their products to 2020, when this situation is supposed to be resolved.
37 Comments on Intel's 14nm Chip Shortage Continues
1. The ryzen APUs are not as energy efficient as their intel counterparts. Comparing 35 to 35 watt parts, AMD manages worse battery life and thermals. Dont forget, most laptops are 15 watt now, and AMD doesnt have an APU with such a TDP available, so much of the market doesnt have an AMD choice
2. AMD's drivers for mobile ryzen are abysmal. With first gen ryzen mobile, AMD went full 1998 and made the OEMs write their own drivers! Not only did the OEMs not have experience writing ryzen drivers, but they also did not have super in depth documentation either, leading to garbage releases. This was also quite noticeable on the GPU side, as the APUs couldnt get the latest GPU drivers from AMD, but rather the OEMs had to make the drivers work with the APUs and their custom code. The backlash from both the user base and manufacturers forced AMD to actually suppor thteir parts properly, but as a result, because AMD takes time to get drivers fixed, the APUs still are less then stable. The whole situation is a pile of garbage and should never have happened, but AMD wanted to be cheap.
3. AMD has a long, documented history of poor OEM support. Motherboard makers working with incomplete AGESA code, AIB makers finding out about new RTG products a week before they launch, poor technical documentation, ece. ASUS reps on the ROG forums have spoken multiple times about how poor AMD's motherboard support is; while intel will give full documentation ofthe chips, send ES sample motherboards and CPUs, and work closely with motherboard OEMs to iron out bugs 3-4 months before launch, AMD's documentation was relatively sparse, their ES CPUs didnt run anywhere near the clock speeds of finalized products, their AGESA code was incomplete and motherboard OEMs have to fill in the blanks, and this was maybe a month before launch, not 3-4 like intel. Much like poor support for AMD partnered game developers, AMD's technical support is run ont he cheap and results in annoying, expensive support bugs and patching. Unsurprisingly, int he mobile space, OEMs like to avoid this at all costs, hence AMD failing to make much headway there.
4. AMD as, historically, had major supply issues with CPUs, especially with lower voltage parts. OEMs are rather wary of manufacturers that cant deliver, this is what killed 3DFX back in the 90s.
2700U,2500U,3700U,3500U,2200U, etc.
Lower battery life, but AMD do make those.
2. Chipset drivers were made by AMD, though not updated by oems.
Graphics drivers were not offered by AMD for a long time, but were made by AMD.
Chipset drivers can also be downloaded from amd.com for laptops.
3. My system is fully stable with the latest drivers. APU system.
2. Chipset drivers and GPU drivers for laptops can be downloaded for AMD laptops TODAY, but not when the ryzen APUs first came out. This was a major critcism of AMD, and you can look up reviews of these machines to see this criticizm reflected by reviewers, that OEMs were responsible for writing complete driver packages and changing AMD's drivers to match their systems, rather then AMD putting out a generic chipset driver like they had with their previous mobile chipsets going back to the early 2000s, and like intel has done since the 90s. There are threads on reddit, OC.net, and even this very site complaining about the issue.
3. Congratulations, but that's 2 years later, and anecdotal evidence (just because YOUR system works fine, does not mean a problem doesnt exist. There are 3rd gen focus drivers out there that dont have transmission problems, but the vast majority of their foci DO have problems, hence their horrible reputation). First gen ryzen APUs did NOT have stable drivers, that scared away customers as well as OEMs. AMD flip flopped on this decision and started releasing drivers themselves again, but if you are an OEM you need consistent support, not schizophrenic driver support/lack of support that changes every generation. AMD cant seem to figure this out. They shot themselves in the foot in the mobile space, and are now back at square 1 for OEM confidence, and will need to build that reputation back up again.If AMD did not have the resources to support a product, theyshpould not be trying to sell said product.
If nvidia or intel released a set of chips, didnt provide any drivers, and as a result the products using them sucked, you would say that is a bad move on intel/nvidia's part. But for AMD? oh no, the poor babies just didnt have the money; they're the underdog!!! If you release a product, and you dont support that product because you dont have money, and think of a hair-brained scheme to make other companies support your product for you, for free, you are both cheap and incompetent. If AMD cpould not support ryzen mobile, they never should have put the money into them! These kinds of actions are why AMD has a negative association with many power users, because they half-ass things they should NEVER half ass.
It doesnt matter if you are making CPUs, washing machines, TVs, any type of electronic, cars, or other physical good. If you cant support it, dont try to sell it, because it is going to blow up in your face when you cant fix these problems, and that investment cash would be better suited to go into the product lines you are actually achieving some success in.