Wednesday, July 2nd 2025
Intel Considers Abandoning 18A Node for 14A Chipmaking Process
Intel's CEO Lip-Bu Tan is looking at a big change to how the company makes chips for others, Reuters reports citing people who know about it. The new plan might mean Intel stops offering its 18A process technology to other companies. This is different from the strategy of the former CEO, Pat Gelsinger, who had invested heavily in the 18A manufacturing process. Since assuming leadership in March, Tan has been working to reduce costs and find new approaches to revive the struggling chipmaker. By June, he began expressing concerns that the 18A process was failing to attract new customers. Abandoning external sales of 18A technology and focusing on its 14A process would require Intel to take substantial write-offs on the billions invested in its development. Industry analysts suggest these charges could reach hundreds of millions or potentially billions of dollars.
Intel plans to show the board these options later this month. However, a final decision is not expected until this autumn given the complexity and financial stakes involved. Even if they change plans, Intel will still keep its promises about 18A process including producing small amounts of chips for Amazon and Microsoft, and making its own "Panther Lake" laptop processors scheduled for late 2025. Along with standard 18A, Intel is creating two upgraded versions: 18A-P launching in 2026 and 18A-PT arriving in 2028.
Intel posted an $18.8 billion net loss in 2024, marking its first unprofitable year since 1986. Tan's alternative strategy centers on concentrating resources on 14A technology, a next-generation manufacturing process where Intel believes it can compete more effectively against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). This approach aims to attract major clients like Apple and NVIDIA, who currently use TSMC for chip production. Intel declined to comment on what it termed market speculation, stating that leadership remains "committed to strengthening our roadmap, building trust with our customers, and improving our financial position."
Source:
Reuters
Intel plans to show the board these options later this month. However, a final decision is not expected until this autumn given the complexity and financial stakes involved. Even if they change plans, Intel will still keep its promises about 18A process including producing small amounts of chips for Amazon and Microsoft, and making its own "Panther Lake" laptop processors scheduled for late 2025. Along with standard 18A, Intel is creating two upgraded versions: 18A-P launching in 2026 and 18A-PT arriving in 2028.
49 Comments on Intel Considers Abandoning 18A Node for 14A Chipmaking Process
Intel is going from bad to worst.I think Samsung has mastered this thing. "We have a new node, but it's not good for manufacturing, moving to the next one".
Intel is more like "We where going to have a new node, but we don't. Adding a + to what is working, hoping to build a newer working node in 2-3 years".
Now it perferctly makes sense why Intel reserved part of TSMC's 2N capacity.
Now, let's be serious - I hope this is not real.
Intel was focusing on 18A node for 2-3 years, made many purchases and investments (apart from bold statements).
18A (allegedly) has good yields. Recently there was interesting report about 18A efficiency. So, where's the problem?
what happened?
As soon as Nova Lake was announced on TSMC in 2h 2026 you knew this was going to happen and all the hype around 18A was complete BS, otherwise they would have used it.
At this point short big poppa uncle sam is going to have to come in and subsidize. Maybe include intel in that runaway defense budget instead of palantir.
But yeah at this point they're still in the woods.
Intel is/was the US' only real homegrown rival trying to compete on the leading/bleeding edge, and they've had more failures than successes. It's interesting that they used to be ahead of Samsung and was once 2nd place in terms of being on the bleeding edge, but now fall behind given they've never gotten a fully viable node going.
www.techpowerup.com/335442/intels-18a-node-outperforms-tsmc-n2-and-samsung-sf2-in-2-nm-performance-class
My opinion withstanding that Intel should spin off its fabs.Isn't that the bottom line with everything coming from China? Just look at the car industry.
I want competition in the x86 market, but Intel did this to themselves.The 20A node process was also supposed to save them, but was cancelled before it could be used for Arrow Lake.
IMO, Intel should've sold their fabs after being stuck on 14nm for so long.