Today was a bad day for Intel. The company’s stock dropped to a several months’ low as the Q3 2020 earnings report was disclosed. Although the revenue was positive and operating profits were in the green, the company disclosed what most of us were already expecting. The Ice Lake-SP processors based on the 10nm node have been delayed for the 4th time, all the way to Q1 2021.
This means that the succeeding 7nm based Sapphire Rapids-SP will also be delayed by a few of months to late 2021, but we expect an ETA of no earlier than H1 2022. Likewise, the second server line based on the 7nm node can’t be expected anytime before 2023.
In the client segment, Intel says that sampling for the hybrid processors, Alder Lake-S has already started. It will be Intel’s first 10nm based desktop lineup leveraging the Golden Cove and Grace Mont cores. However, considering that Rocket Lake-S is slated to arrive in the first quarter of 2021, Alder Lake-S won’t show up anytime before Q4 2021. A delay to 2022 is also very plausible.
There was some positive news on the company’s discrete GPU initiative (Xe). The company’s first dGPU, DG1 is now shipping, going by the name of Iris Xe Max. It comes with 96 EUs based on the Gen12 architecture, 4GB memory, and 16MB of L3 cache. The bus width will either be 64-bit or 128-bit. It’ll be exclusive to Tiger Lake-U notebooks.
Intel also said that DG2, the successor to DG1 is back from the foundries and has been powered on. Unlike DG1, DG2 will be part of the Xe-HPG lineup that is intended for the mainstream gaming lineup.
