Why Did Intel's 10 Nanometer Node Slip?

Chris Auth says Intel's 10 nanometer node slipped because the targets were more aggressive than historical scaling, and extreme ultraviolet lithography was not ready when the node was defined.

Intel had kept a new manufacturing cadence about every two years. The original target launch was 2016, and manufacturing did not begin until 2018. The last set of products slipped almost four years. Engineers invented ways to hit the goal without new tools, and that burden landed on the process. TSMC put EUV into volume manufacturing in 2019 and ramped it further on its 5 nanometer node in 2020. Intel's first EUV process did not reach products until 2023, so TSMC had about four more years with the machines. The finished node still had world-class yield, performance, and cost. It took longer than Intel wanted.

That miss led to maturity metrics and a phase gate between pathfinding and development. Yield, defect, and performance have to clear the gate before a feature enters the flow. A feature that misses moves to the next technology. Each node now takes only as much innovation as the customer's timeline can hold.