Intel revealed a bit more details regarding the yield rate and general manufacturing process details, saying that 14nm manufacturing issues are still not resolved, which is the reason behind Skylake shortages.

According to the information published by Computerbase.de, Intel is still facing manufacturing issues with the 14nm manufacturing process, where all the manufacturing issues are still not resolved and the yield is worse than expected. This is pretty much the reason behind Skylake volume production and shortages in the channel.

Even after the official launch of the first processors based on 14nm manufacturing process, the yield has still not reached the desired levels. Precisely, the yield on the 14nm manufacturing process has still not reached the levels of 22nm manufacturing process and the schedule has moved from the first half of the 2015 to mid-2016, when it should reach desired level of yield.

This could also impact Intel plans with both 10nm and 7nm manufacturing process. According to Intel, the next two manufacturing nodes are still on track to achieve existing targets but the cost per wafer will rise significantly, pushing up the cost per transistor.

Intel now has a significant competition from the likes of TSMC and Samsung and while these can provide better yields, Intel notes that both Broadwell and Skylake chips are much more complex and have higher transistor density compared to Samsung and TSMC chips. Intel believes that its 10nm manufacturing process will be on track and ahead of the competition.

Our thoughts on this topic

It's been an open secret for years, that the production of silicon chips is going to become exponentially more difficult when the companies approach 10nm manufacturing process. Transistors are going to be so small that the isolation layers can't be made thick enough anymore. Ultimately leakage issues will make yields go down and R&D time will go up, since new materials need to be found to do the insulation. Apart from that it's not helping Intel that their CPUs are immensely complex.

Speaking about complexity: it's interesting to see these days that manufacturers like Samsung and TSMC a capable of producing CPUs at 14/16nm with high yields. At a first glance it might look like the technological gap between Intel and other semiconductor manufacturing companies is getting smaller. Intel is countering this, saying that their processors are by far more complex, which is holding them back on good yields.

At this point it will be very interesting to see when TSMC is going to manufacture the first AMD or NVIDIA GPUs using 14/16nm process technology. GPUs are even more complex and if TSMC achieves mass production before Intel launches their Braodwell-E or Broardwell-EP chips, then we could definitely say that the other semiconductor manufacturers have caught up significantly.





Source: Computerbase.de.