Intel's 18A process is the last node of Intel's "Five Process Nodes in Four Years" plan formulated in 2021, and is the culmination of Intel's years of wafer manufacturing experience and billions of dollars in research and development. According to the mass production time announced by Intel, Intel will surpass competitors TSMC and Samsung through this process.
Recently, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger (Pat Kissinger) was interviewed by AnandTech, the reporter asked "Intel's entire company bet on the next advanced process is still correct", Gelsinger responded that he did bet the company's future on Intel 18A success, causing surprise to the on-site personnel.
Kissinger further added that some of the "four years and five nodes" process will coexist with Intel 18A for a long time, including Intel 3 and Intel 18A upgrades, which are only available for server CPUs. At the same time, it will also cooperate with Tower Semiconductor and UMC to produce mature processes, and Intel's new factory in New Mexico will also focus on foundry advanced packaging. In other words, while Intel 18A is likely to be the main revenue for Intel's foundry business in the future**, there will still be many other revenues**.
Although Intel 18A has not yet been successfully mass-produced, Intel has made a lot of progress before that. For example, in April 2023, Intel announced that it had reached an agreement with ARM to build a customized SoC based on Intel 18A; In mid-July 2023, Intel announced that as part of the second phase of the U.S. Department of Defense's "Rapid Support Microelectronics Prototyping-Business Plan (RAMP-C)" program, Intel's Foundry Services Group will add two new customers: Boeing and Northrop Grumman; In late July 2023, Intel announced that it would cooperate with Ericsson, a Swedish telecom equipment manufacturer, to use its Intel 18A process to manufacture custom 5G SoCs (System-on-Chip) for Ericsson, creating highly differentiated and leading products for its 5G infrastructure in the future. On February 22, 2024, at Intel's "IFS Direct Connect" event, Microsoft announced plans to use the Intel 18A process node to produce one of its chips.
In addition, in the previous financial report meeting for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023, Intel CEO Gelsinger revealed that Intel 20A and Intel 18A will be ready this year, as the first company to incorporate GAA transistors and backside power supply technology into a single process node at the same time, and its backside power delivery technology (Backside Power Delivery) is two years ahead of competitors. Among them, Intel's first Intel 20A-based Arrow Lake processor will be launched this year. Intel 18A is expected to be manufacturing-ready in the second half of 2024. At present, Intel's first Intel 18A-based server processor, ClearWater Forest, has entered the fab, and the client-oriented Intel 18A-based Panther Lake processor will soon enter the fab.
In contrast, the mass production time of TSMC and Samsung's 2nm process technology will need to wait until 2025, and in addition, in terms of backside power supply technology, TSMC will also have to wait until 2026 to adopt the mass production N2P process. In other words, as soon as this year, Intel will surpass TSMC in advanced processes. Intel's commercial INTE 18A is expected to further extend its lead in the first half of 2025.
Previously, Kissinger said in an interview that the performance of Intel 18A process will be ahead of TSMC's N2 (2nm) process. Although the transistor density of Intel's 18A process and TSMC's N2 process seems to be similar, Intel's backside power supply technology is better, which makes the silicon chip have better area efficiency, which means lower cost, and better power supply means higher performance. Good transistor density and excellent power supply make the Intel 18A process slightly ahead of TSMC N2. In addition, TSMC's packaging costs are very high, and Intel's gross profit margin is expected to increase slowly.
Editor: Xinzhixun-Rogue Sword.