Intel's process delays. How bad is it really?
Original 10nm - Late 2016.
Is it really? Let's backtrack.
Late 2016 - Cannonlake
Late 2014 - Broadwell
Late 2012 - Ivy Bridge. Reality = Mid 2012
Late 2010 - Westmere(Oops!). Reality = Early 2010, very early, like January.
Just looking at 10nm delays, we're looking at 3 years, because first products are planned for late 2019. Even if we took Intel's claims at face value they were 3.5 years ahead(because they had FinFET 3.5 years before everyone, not that it mattered in reality but let's ignore that...), nearly all advantage was erased.
However, that ignores the delays that happened after 32nm. Let's recap. We know 14nm had serious troubles as well. That's why we ended up with them missing some of the markets and a staggered launch, along with the disappointment AKA Core M. But Skylake sorta redeems it by coming out in Late 2015 in full. There were sayings Skylake had to have its architecture modified to account for the underperforming 14nm process, so maybe not everything was rosy as we could have got few % faster uarch.
What's less known are the delays to 22nm. While it wasn't publicly known, it was definitely not in line with 12 month Tick/Tock cadence. Ivy Bridge came after 16-17 months in April, or 4-5 months delay. The performance and overclockability was a disappointment especially after the media fanfare that surrounded 22nm's TriGate process. We'll get to know later that the 22nm was really made for Silvermont Atom, which failed to have any impact anyway.
Haswell pushed that further to June. So 1-2 months delay. And finally, we see Broadwell coming in extremely limited quantities with a crippled chip after 16-18 months or 4-6 months delay.
Why did 22nm get delayed? Probably for mobile.
Why did 14nm get delayed? Mobile.
Why did 10nm get delayed? Density ePeen against ARM competitors, so again Mobile.
The real original roadmap:
Early 2010 - Westmere
Early 2012 - Ivy Bridge
Early 2014 - Broadwell
Early 2016 - 10nm Cannonlake
Early 2018 - 7nm Tigerlake
4 years delay. That's how we end up from having a lead in nearly every metric to a loss in just 8 years(Sandy Bridge in 2011 to Icelake in 2019). It's interesting how if instead they didn't directly pursue mobile but indirectly competed by making better PC chips, it would have been much better for Intel. By pursuing a side business they are losing the main. Many big businesses actually do this.