Intel to launch 10 nm chips in 2017

[Photo credit: Intel | Facebook]

Intel, the leading manufacturer of desktop and laptop computers, is expected to launch its 10 nm processors by 2017. News concerning the release of the company's chips came from Taha Khalifa, Intel's general manager for the Middle Eastern and North Africa regions. 

"We have been consistently pursuing Moore's Law and this has been the core of our innovation for the last 40 years," Khalifa told Gulf News. "The 10nm chips are expected to be launched early 2017."

According to KitGuru, Intel is supposed to start production of its 10 nm chips in mid-2016, one year following the introduction of Skylake, the company's processors manufactured on the 14 nm process and the successor to the Broadwell chips.

But based on the report by Gulf News, Skylake will be launched by the end of this year. It can be surmised then that the production of the Cannonlake chips using 10 nm manufacturing technology is moved to late 2016, thus moving the launch date to 2017. But even though Intel had stated that it is working on a smaller fabrication process in order to improve performance and power consumption of its upcoming chips, the company never gave an exact release date. 

One of the probable reasons why the company has found the need to move its initial schedule is because the entire processor industry as a whole seems to be suffering from issues concerning manufacturing processors on a lower fabrication process. Currently, Samsung is the only firm that has the capacity to mass produce the 14 nm FinFET chips for Apple, Qualcomm and NVIDIA. Apple tapped the South Korean smartphone giant rather than TSMC, a firm that seems to be efficient in manufacturing only 16 nm chips, something that other tech firms will not approve since Samsung's application processors seems to be a far better option.