Speaking at the company’s 2019 Investor Meeting, CEO Bob Swan announced that Intel will release their first 7nm chips in 2021. Intel also expects to have 10nm products out for PCs this year and servers early next year, while 14nm chips should meet full demand by the fourth quarter.
The company’s new roadmap may draw skepticism due to their fumbles with 10nm, but AnandTech suggests the 7nm target isn’t all that unrealistic. That’s because Intel’s 7nm technology is being produced by a different team, utilizing EUVL instead of multipatterning, which was largely responsible for the 10nm debacle.
Intel’s 7 nm production technology had been in development independently from the 10 nm process and by a different crew, so this one is closer than one might think. The node technology is set to use extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) with laser wavelength of 13.5 nm for select layers, so it will not heavily rely on multipatterning, the source of problems with Intel’s 10 nm process.