Reply to post: Re: Nokia 5G

Nokia: Oops, financials aren't great. Never mind, 5G will solve our woes

IanDs

Re: Nokia 5G

Assuming the rumours are true, it looks like a bad decision only with the benefit of hindsight...

Rewind 3 years or so (typical development time for chips like this) to when Nokia (or whoever...) had to decide on a silicon supplier, and Intel were promising that their 10nm technology would have better PPA and cost than anything else and was going to be available earlier too, so going with it instead of the obvious foundry process (TSMC) must have looked like the way to get an unassailable lead on the competition. I also know from a previous life that Intel were offering very attractive wafer prices to try and bring in new foundry business, which looked very tempting at the time.

And if Intel had delivered 10nm when they originally promised -- or even now, only a couple of years late -- this would all have worked, and Nokia (or whoever...) would have a product with no competition and cleaned up the market. But with no end in sight to the Intel 10nm fiasco which now doesn't look like it will be able to yield big chips (which I expect ReefShark is, even if not as big as Ice Lake) until well into 2020, this could indeed be a complete disaster for Nokia (or whoever...)

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