A combination of solid products from Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) and years of delays and missteps on the manufacturing side has put chip giant Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) in a tough spot. The company is still manufacturing many chips on its 14-nanometer (nm) process because of problems with its 10nm process, a situation that has erased any manufacturing lead Intel once had over third-party foundries.
AMD uses a 7nm process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing for its latest Ryzen PC chips. The Ryzen 5000 series, which launched late last year, overtook Intel's chips in terms of single-threaded performance thanks in part to that cutting-edge manufacturing technology. Single-threaded performance is particularly important for gaming, as well as for other use cases that can't take full advantage of many cores.
Comparing manufacturing processes across companies isn't exactly apples-to-apples, but it's clear that Intel has fallen behind. However, the company is still managing to wring out performance gains from its 14nm process. Intel's latest Rocket Lake PC chips, built on a heavily tweaked and optimized 14nm process, manage to hold their own against AMD.
Source Fool.com