I don't know how much this is still true but traditionally Intel processes have better drive currents but more restrictive design rules than their competitors' at a given node. So I'm skeptical that their densities would equal TSMC's in practice. This isn't to deny that Intel 10nm and TSMC 7nm are roughly equivalent, just to say they make different trade offs in a way that chart doesn't cover.

Density is not really an important metric to end users though. What matters is power consumption and achievable clock speeds but these are very difficult to directly compare between processes unless someone has made the same design on both (as has happened with several phone SoCs dual sourcing from TSMC/Samsung).

Density is important for the fab. Power consumption and clock speeds are something that can be tuned per design even for the same process.

Well yes obviously it's important to the fab. Higher density allows them to fit more dies on a wafer, sell for slightly higher margins, whatever. Great for Intel but again absolutely zero reason for end users to care. Pricing is basically completely divorced from the manufacturing costs anyway.

When someone says something like "Intel's 14nm is as good as TSMC's 10nm" I think most people would expect this to be talking about the performance of the chips being produced.

> When someone says something like "Intel's 14nm is as good as TSMC's 10nm" I think most people would expect this to be talking about the performance of the chips being produced.

One could reasonably assume that when discussion this on a consumer oriented forum or publication.

But this is an article (for an author with a spotty record at best) about the state of the industry, not about whether or not you'll be able to clock your CPU a few MHz higher.

Density is critically important, because density is directly related to cost, same performance chip in half the size is half the cost to produce.