On Intel's most recent earnings call, CEO Brian Krzanich finally admitted what many in the industry have long intuited, understood, or scooped: the company is struggling with its 10-nm process technology, and those struggles are preventing the company from achieving good yields of 10-nm chips.

Krzanich admitted to analysts that the company "bit off a little too much" with its aggressive 2.7x scaling target for the process compared to its 14-nm products. Consequently, Intel says it's in the process of correcting the yield issues it has identified with its chips. The downside is that those yield issues will apparently require lots of time yet to resolve. Although Krzanich still says Intel is shipping 10-nm products today (although it still isn't clear to whom), the CEO says volume production of 10-nm silicon will not occur before 2019, and he wouldn't confirm to analysts whether that production would occur in the first half or second half of that year.