In 1965, Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation made an observation and postulated that the number of transistors in a given chip will double in about every 18 months. In 1971 Intel 4004 was commercially released as the first microprocessor (4-bit) This postulate has been held true for the last 50 years. Hence this is called Moore’s law today.
Cut to August 2014, Intel released Broadwell micro-architecture with 14nm transistors in it. This architechture did not last long but the Skylake architecture is the first long-lasting CPU architecture using the 14nm transistors. After introducing the microprocessor chips with 14nm transistors, Intel is unable to follow Moore’s law.
Intel thus changed its direction to cope with the technology advances continuing their R&D towards producing smaller transistors. Intel worked on multi-core CPU and hyperthreading to improve the performance and used the 14nm technology CPU to its fullest. Finally Intel introduced the 10nm Transistor based CPU, the Ice-Lake architecture on May 28, 2019. But this timespan of five years with 14nm technology did cost a significant price.
The masking and lithography technology used for 14nm transistor is not customizable so as to create the 10nm and 7nm transistor as the widths are more thin compared to 14nm which makes the diffraction and refraction of light affect negatively. Hence a new setup was to be prepared to make the 10nm and 7nm transistors. Beyond 7nm, the lithography techniques are a serious problem. Even if they are overcomed, comes the effects like quantum tunneling which the FinFet will not be able to solve.
Intel is outperformed by Global Foundries (making chips for AMD) and TSMC in production of the 7nm transistor based chips commercially and are very much sound in producing the 5nm and 3nm technology soon. While Intel’s 7nm transistor based chip is delayed till 2022-23, AMD succeeded in releasing the 7nm based Ryzen 4000 series of mobile chips powering Asus Zephyrus G14, Acer swift 3, etc. ARM architecture has succeeded in producing 10nm technology based chips with the help of Qualcomm and TSMC on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 and 8nm technology on Snapdragon 670.
Considering multicore and hyperthreading, AMD has outperformed Intel with its 6C/12T (AMD Ryzen 5 2600) CPU released in April 2018 and 8C/16T (AMD Ryzen 7 1700) CPU released in March 2017 giving a much higher performance boost when Intel still stuck with its 4C/8T CPUs. Though Intel produced core i9-8950u 6C/12T CPU used in the 2018 Macbook Pro, a considerable number of users faced thermal issue and processor throttling.
In 2014, Intel made an announcement to produce 10nm technology by 2016 but unfortunately was delayed till 2019. This setback for Intel have led many PC gamers and OEMs to rely on AMD, who was smart enough to grab this opportunity.
Apple have already been producing iphones and ipad based on the ARM architecture and the chips fabricated by TSMC. The ipad pro with ARM based chip has been tested to outperform the Intel powered Macbooks on heavier tasks. Hence Apple has announced its shift from Intel to ARM based Apple chips for the Macbooks and Imacs after the 2019-20 line-up of macbook.
Though 21st Century has been harsh on Intel but some facts prove that Intel may be back with a bang. Being an Intel lover, I desire to see the bang soon.
Sources / References [If Any] : Internet