Do you have a source for that? Even if it were true, the 2x lower costs would eventually pay back the R&D, so Moore's law could continue anyway. Costs are indeed rising and they want to be safe indeed, so they're not giving i7s away for $50.
(1)
But everything you say in this post can also be applied to other companies like TSMC or Samsung, and you should be least worried about Intel.
(2)
If you look at Intel's CPU die sizes, they have shrunk over the past years:
Broadwell will go well below 150mm² for the first time since 2006, certainly if Intel's famous
density claims are true (it look like almost 2 full nodes, so maybe up to 3x higher density?).
(3)
So it looks like Intel is trying to get higher margins on their CPUs by not doubling transistor count every die shrink. And even then, Nvidia's 550mm² GK110 has a lower consumer cost/mm² on a worse TSMC process node while they're a fabless company (= lower margins), so I don't think Intel has any problems.
(4)
(1) There was a PDF outlining the cost rise of new Processes and designing cost for a new Chip but i cant find it now. But 22nm dies doesnt cost 2x less than 32nm. For example, 22nm 4770K die is not 2x cheaper than 32nm 2600K.
Even without taking the R&D cost of the process in to consideration, 4770K is 170mm2 and 2600K is 240mm2. With the same 80% yields for both of them, you get 193 dies for the 2600K and 275 dies for the 4770 per wafer.
Now because 22nm is more expensive to manufacture the wafers due to more stages in the process, the wafer cost will be higher than 32nm. lets assume it will be 20% more expensive, so if 32nm wafer costs $4000 then 22nm will cost $4800.
Now lets see how much each die cost,
Core i7 2600k with 80% yield will get 193 dies per wafer, each die will cost 4000/193 =
$20,72
Core i7 4770k with 80% yield will get 275 dies per wafer, each die will cost 4800/275 =
$17,45
Core i7 4770K is
only 15,78% cheaper than Core i7 2600K
.
And that without taking the R&D cost in to consideration.
(2) As i have said, that applies for every Fab in the world and not only Intel, i have just taken Intel products to showcase what is going on.
(3) Are you sure Broadwell Core i7 will be bellow 150mm2 ??? Because if Intel will increase the iGPU it will affect the die size as well.
(4) Im not saying Intel has a problem, im saying that Cost per Transistor is irrelevant for the consumer.
CPUs at the same segment are not becoming cheaper per new process for the manufacturer or the consumer. A Core i7 in 2008 (Nehalem) cost the same as Core i7 today (Haswell) although transistor cost has fallen dramatically since then.
AMDs and NVIDIAs 28nm products price have risen significantly since 40nm, even though
Cost per Transistor has fallen. That happen because die size hasn't shrank(GF110 is almost the same die size as GK110) from one process to the other, wafer cost risen from 40nm to 28nm and sales volume remained the same or fallen, both of AMD and NVIDIA raised the prices of their products.
Intel did the same, 2600K was released at $329 MSRP, Core i7 4770K is at $350 MSRP.