Intel already working on 14nm ?

It seems that Intel has more surprises than we thought, as was revealed by Pat Bielmer, managing Director of Intel Northern Europe, stated in an exclusive interview with Nordic Hardware.

The interview was principally about the 22nm technology from Ivy Bridge and beyond. Bielmer wasn’t very specific nor technical, but he did say that there will be a more expanded use of the Tri-Gate technology as the one in Ivy Bridge and the test circuits are currently running.

“We need to keep going and you can trust me that in our labs we actually have the next generation after 22nm running, so we need to keep going.[…]I cannot really disclose more about that other than that in a laboratory-environment, absolutely we do have the path, our engineers do have the path to actually go and produce 14nm products. There are many variables that you can play with of course it is not the right name for it and the engineers would not like it when I say play, that you can influence to actually go and stay to that model. And I think the breakthrough we had now with the 3D metal gates, just the design of the gate will actually allow for much more efficient thermals and power.”

A 2D (planar) transistor compared to a 3D (tri-gate) transistor

Planning is very important, but Intel went even further and planned everything in advance for 7 years, up to the end of 2018, in which they not only planned the processor’s names in advance, but they seem decided to break the 14nm around the half of 2015 and they want to arrive to 10nm around the end of 2017.

Although one thing that leaves me thinking, and those most attentive will have noticed, according to this roadmap from Intel, most of the launches are late, so could this roadmap dating from July already be out of date?

Either way, we know that Intel is decided on going forward with technology as much as they can.

Source 1; Source 2