Thursday, September 5th 2024
Intel 20A Node Cancelled for Foundry Customers, "Arrow Lake" Mainly Manufactured Externally
Intel has announced the cancellation of its 20A node for Foundry customers, as well as shifting majority of Arrow Lake production to external foundries. The tech giant will instead focus its resources on the more advanced 18A node while relying on external partners for Arrow Lake production, likely tapping TSMC or Samsung for their 2 nm nodes. The decision follows Intel's successful release of the 18A Process Design Kit (PDK) 1.0 in July, which garnered positive feedback from the ecosystem, according to the company. Intel reports that the 18A node is already operational, booting operating systems and yielding well, keeping the company on track for a 2025 launch. This early success has enabled Intel to reallocate engineering resources from 20A to 18A sooner than anticipated. As a result, the "Arrow Lake processor family will be built primarily using external partners and packaged by Intel Foundry".
The 20A node, while now cancelled for Arrow Lake, has played a crucial role in Intel's journey towards 18A. It served as a testbed for new techniques, materials, and transistor architectures essential for advancing Moore's Law. The 20A node successfully integrated both RibbonFET gate-all-around transistor architecture and PowerVia backside power delivery for the first time, providing valuable insights that directly informed the development of 18A. Intel's decision to focus on 18A is also driven by economic factors. With the current 18A defect density already at D0 <0.40, the company sees an opportunity to optimize its engineering investments by transitioning now. However, challenges remain, as evidenced by recent reports of Broadcom's disappointment in the 18A node. Despite these hurdles, Intel remains optimistic about the future of its foundry services and the potential of its advanced manufacturing processes. The coming months will be crucial as the company works to demonstrate the capabilities of its 18A node and secure more partners for its foundry business.
Source:
Intel
The 20A node, while now cancelled for Arrow Lake, has played a crucial role in Intel's journey towards 18A. It served as a testbed for new techniques, materials, and transistor architectures essential for advancing Moore's Law. The 20A node successfully integrated both RibbonFET gate-all-around transistor architecture and PowerVia backside power delivery for the first time, providing valuable insights that directly informed the development of 18A. Intel's decision to focus on 18A is also driven by economic factors. With the current 18A defect density already at D0 <0.40, the company sees an opportunity to optimize its engineering investments by transitioning now. However, challenges remain, as evidenced by recent reports of Broadcom's disappointment in the 18A node. Despite these hurdles, Intel remains optimistic about the future of its foundry services and the potential of its advanced manufacturing processes. The coming months will be crucial as the company works to demonstrate the capabilities of its 18A node and secure more partners for its foundry business.
72 Comments on Intel 20A Node Cancelled for Foundry Customers, "Arrow Lake" Mainly Manufactured Externally
But I know we could buy products with TSMC N3 anywhere.
an image comes to mind from a satirical 'childrens'book The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman (if you have a library card, you might want to look it up and read it. it's a nice book)
x.com/gray/status/1557287299582509056/photo/2
replace the boats with fabs, although I'm certain there will be boats too. Loads of parallels could be drawn with the book and today.
But that's not what TPU is about so I better shut up about it.
Anyway: Intel fabs without intel as the main user would mean an other Glofo that can't earn enough to update to the latest technology and will be defunct in a decade or so.
Intel 20A Node Cancelled for Foundry Customers
Then look at your slide. Does it show 20A as being a foundry node, like it shows for 18A? So by your own evidence 20A was never a foundry node.Did you read the interview from Feb where Intel says 18A is the foundry node?
I’m hoping that someone that registered here 11 years ago knows what a foundry is.
ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codename/90353/products-formerly-meteor-lake.html
a20 wasgoing to,be something intel was going to be using them selves
Hey look what we've got for you a shiny new 18/14A node which is 10~20% better than 20A you know the last node we cancelled :slap:
Foundries are the problem right now. But last sentence is very-very true so I would suspect these will not go anywhere either.
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/30/how-a-british-tech-champion-almost-fell-into-chinas-grasp/?msockid=38bf10cf3c0864fa0e68043d3d9365d2
Intel would still be able to operate some fabs because of the DoD contractors correct? I don't think they'd let S. Korea or Taiwan have access to that stuff.
Yes you can buy Intel 4 Meteor Lake virtually anywhere. Wal-Mart even sells them.
20A is the former 5 nm, 18A is 5 nm+, it's a "+" so it only makes sense to use the ""+ from then on like always. But makes you wonder if there's a ++ or 16A, probably not and it goes directly to 14A (3nm).
This stuff is easy to look up.
www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#