The market has been suffering from shortages of 14nm Intel processors since the middle of last year. The company made enormous efforts to correct the current situation, investing an additional $1 billion in expanding production using a far from modern technological process, but if this helped, it did not completely. As reported by Digitimes, Intel's Asian customers are again complaining about the inability to purchase 14nm Intel processors in sufficient quantities, which ultimately forces them to even postpone the announcements of some of their new products from the end of this year to the beginning of next year.
It is worth recalling that the beginning of the shortage last year looked about the same: second-tier laptop manufacturers were the first to complain about shortages, and they began to do this long before Intel itself admitted its inability to meet demand. It would seem that the situation should have changed since then, because Intel was finally able to launch 10nm technology, which is now being used to produce a new generation of mobile processors, Ice Lake. But, apparently, deliveries of Ice Lake are still not so significant, and the bulk of Intelβs partners continue to prefer 14-nm chips. In addition, along with 10nm Ice Lake, the microprocessor giant announced 14nm Comet Lake processors, as a result of which the demand for 14nm Intel products in the mobile segment has not decreased at all.
To be fair, it is worth emphasizing that the original Digitimes material talks about the renewed shortage specifically in the context of Intel mobile processors. Indeed, at the last IFA 2019 exhibition, many laptop manufacturers presented their new models of laptop computers based on the latest 14nm Intel chips, promising to start shipping them before the end of the year, and this could really lead to a significant increase in demand for 14nm processors, get ready to which Intel did not properly manage. What the situation really is, we will probably find out very soon when we see how actively mobile computers based on Comet Lake appear on store shelves.
As for 14nm processors for the desktop and server segments, there will probably be no interruptions in their supply even during the pre-Christmas high sales season. Intel has long indicated that it is primarily interested in satisfying orders for βlarge coresβ and more expensive processors of the Core and Xeon families, so Atom-class solutions used in Chromebooks and budget platforms, short deliveries of which have become common over the past year, will most likely come under attack business.
The expected announcements of 14-nm processors for the desktop segment, including the release of the 5-GHz Core i9-9900KS and the updated Cascade Lake-X family of HEDT chips, are unlikely to create serious production problems for Intel. Such processors are aimed at the upper price segments, and it is unlikely that the demand for them will be so noticeable that meeting it will require any special efforts from Intel.
Source: 3dnews.ru