Still think 14nm is the end of Tick-Tock, just based on costs alone. So they will need that Ireland fab eventually when (nearly) all of their products are on 14 nm at the same time.
The expense of node-shrinking is not in the creation of the node itself, see TSMC's annual R&D budget for an idea of what it takes to make advanced nodes; rather, the expense of creating the IC designs for the advanced nodes is what is spiraling out of control (see AMD's and Nvidia's annual R&D budget for an idea of what it takes to design/validate IC's on advanced nodes).
Intel isn't leading the R&D pack because of their efforts to have 14nm production worthy by 2014...its leading the R&D pack because of their efforts to have 14nm chips designed, validated, and ready to go into production in 2014.
This is also why you see companies like AMD publicly stating they are going to slow down their own cadence of node-adoption (even though they are fabless and the newer nodes will be available at the foundries).
AMD - We Would Like to Use Process Technologies for Longer Periods of Time.
“It is getting tougher and tougher to get to new nodes. 28nm might be with us a little longer than people [think]. [It will be a while] before they jump into 20nm node or 16nm or 14nm,” said Devinder Kumar, the corporate controller and the interim chief financial officer, at Raymond James IT supply chain conference.
“Our vision is extending the lifetime of nodes. I think we showed with our Brazos processors that were on 40nm for a long time and we competed very effectively with other products on the market that were two nodes ahead of us. We could sell at a nice cost profile and the functionality that the consumer wants today. […] So, no nodes transition is easy. […] Earlier this year we have brought our GPU products to 28nm. You will see [Kabini and Temash] APUs in the first half of next year on the 28nm. […] We have not said when we are going to 20nm, which would be the next node,” said Ruth Cotter, vice president of investor relations at the Raymond James conference.
source
Notice that is the CFO talking about gating the pace of node-adoption for AMD, not the CTO or prominent technology leader of any regard from within AMD.
The mind is willing (the CTO), but the pocketbook is not (the CFO).
I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding within the laymen community, the thinking that Intel has a node-lead over its competitors because it was more committed to investing more heavily in process node development. That isn't what gave them a node advantage, the node advantage came at the prioritization of R&D funding to develop the IC's themselves that would be produced on the leading edge node...that is where the real cost was incurred.
Intel will be the first to have 14nm, and 10nm, in production because they have the volumes to justify the R&D expense of creating/designing/validating the ICs for those nodes in the first place. Not too many other
fabless companies have the resources to devote towards designing 14nm or 10nm chips. AMD doesn't, and Nvidia keeps crowing about things in a way that makes me think they are on the edge of the bubble as well.