Intel has prepared "Jaguar Shores," its "next-next" generation AI and HPC accelerator, successor to its upcoming "Falcon Shores" GPU. Revealed during a technical workshop at the SC2024 conference, the chip was unveiled by Intel's Habana Labs division, albeit unintentionally. This announcement positions Jaguar Shores as the successor to Falcon Shores, which is scheduled to launch next year. While details about Jaguar Shores remain sparse, its designation suggests it could be a general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) aimed at both AI training, inferencing, and HPC tasks. Intel's strategy aligns with its push to incorporate advanced manufacturing nodes, such as the 18A process featuring RibbonFET and backside power delivery, which promise significant efficiency gains, so we can expect to see upcoming AI accelerators incorporating these technologies.

Intel's AI chip lineup has faced numerous challenges, including shifting plans for Falcon Shores, which has transitioned from a CPU-GPU hybrid to a standalone GPU, and cancellation of Ponte Vecchio. Despite financial constraints and job cuts, Intel has maintained its focus on developing cutting-edge AI solutions. "We continuously evaluate our roadmap to ensure it aligns with the evolving needs of our customers. While we don't have any new updates to share, we are committed to providing superior enterprise AI solutions across our CPU and accelerator/GPU portfolio." an Intel spokesperson stated. The announcement of Jaguar Shores shows Intel's determination to remain competitive. However, the company faces steep competition. NVIDIA and AMD continue to set benchmarks with performant designs, while Intel has struggled to capture a significant share of the AI training market. The company's Gaudi lineup ends with third generation, and Gaudi IP will get integrated into Falcon Shores.

According to Taiwanese media Commercial Times, Intel is significantly increasing its outsourcing of "Arrow Lake" CPU production to TSMC, a strategic move as it grapples with persistent issues in its own foundry division. This decision to outsource a substantial portion of Arrow Lake's production is a significant shift in Intel's strategy, showing the company's rising reliance on external partners to meet quality and performance demands. The Arrow Lake Core Ultra 200 series is Intel's first major outsourcing initiative, in which Intel gave its core IP to third-party foundries, more specifically for a 3 nm node at TSMC. However, it clearly indicates the performance gaps in Intel's own Intel Foundry and the high demand expectations for the new CPUs. Originally intended to use Intel 20A node, Intel shifted focus of 18A node for its products and upcoming foundry customers.

Intel's recent orders with TSMC extend to its upcoming Lunar Lake chips and next-generation Falcon Shores AI GPUs, both of which will use TSMC's 3 nm process. Although Intel's 18A node remains promising, the company relies on current products to sustain its revenue streams, making TSMC's support crucial in ensuring timely shipments. This increased outsourcing reflects Intel's need to maintain competitive performance in the short term. Once its Foundry division meets performance and capacity targets, Intel aims to bring more CPU manufacturing back in-house. However, if anything goes wrong, Intel could face challenges securing sufficient volume from TSMC, as the foundry has longstanding commitments with major clients like Apple, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and AMD.

Intel's recent financial woes have brought the company into severe cost-cutting measures, including job cuts and project delays. However, a silver lining remains—Intel is reportedly in the final stages of securing $8.5 billion in direct funding from the US government under the CHIPS Act, delivered by the end of the year. The potential financing comes at a crucial time for Intel, which has been grappling with financial challenges. The company reported a $1.6 billion loss in the second quarter of 2024, leading to short-term setbacks. However, thanks to sources close to the Financial Times, we learn that Intel's funding target will represent the CHIPS Act's largest share, leading to a massive boost to US-based semiconductor manufacturing.

Looking ahead, the potential CHIPS Act funding could serve as a catalyst for Intel's resurgence, reassuring both investors and customers about the company's future. A key element of Intel's recovery strategy lies in the ramp-up of production for its advanced 18A node, which should become the primary revenue driver for its foundry unit. This advancement, coupled with the anticipated government backing, positions Intel to potentially capture market share from established players like TSMC and Samsung. The company has already secured high-profile customers such as Amazon and (allegedly) Broadcom, hinting at its growing appeal in the foundry space. Moreover, Intel's enhanced domestic manufacturing capabilities align well with potential US government mandates for companies like NVIDIA and Apple to produce processors locally, a consideration driven by escalating geopolitical tensions.

Details have emerged about Intel's upcoming "Panther Lake" processors, set to be the third generation of Core Ultra mobile chips. Called the Core Ultra 300 series, these CPUs are expected to succeed "Lunar Lake". According to recent leaks, Panther Lake-H will be manufactured using Intel's cutting-edge 18A process node. The chips are said to feature a combination of Cougar Cove P-Cores, Skymont E-Cores, and Xe3 (Celestial) integrated graphics. This architecture builds upon Intel's hybrid core design, refining it for even better performance on mobile devices. The leaked information suggests a range of configurations for Panther Lake-H, the high-perfomance variant of the lineup. These include models with varying core counts and power envelopes, from efficient 25 W parts to more interesting 45 W options. Notably, some SKUs reportedly feature up to 18 cores in total, combining P-cores, E-cores, and LP E-cores in a five-tile package. This is an increase from previously believed 16 cores.

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.

According to a recent Reuters report, Intel's 18A node doesn't seem to be production-ready. As the sources indicate, Broadcom has been reportedly testing Intel's 18A node on its internal company designs, which include an extensive range of products from AI accelerators to networking switches. However, as Broadcom received the initial production run from Intel, the 18A node seems to be in a worse state than initially expected. After testing the wafers and powering them on, Broadcom reportedly concluded that the 18A process is not yet ready for high-volume production. With Broadcom's comments reflecting high-volume production, it signals that the 18A node is not producing a decent yield that would satisfy external customers.

While this is not a good sign of Intel's Fundry contract business development, it shows that the node is presumably in a good state in terms of power/performance. Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that 18A is now at 0.4 d0 defect density, and it is now a "healthy process." However, alternatives exist at TSMC, which proves to be a very challenging competitor to take on, as its N7 and N5 nodes had a defect density of 0.33 during development and 0.1 defect density during high-volume production. This leads to better yields and lower costs for the contracting party, resulting in higher profits. Ultimately, it is up to Intel to improve its production process further to satisfy customers. Gelsinger wants to see Intel Foundry as "manufacturing ready" by the end of the year, and we can see the first designs in 2025 reach volume production. There are still a few more months to improve the node, and we expect to see changes implemented by the end of the year.

Intel today announced that its lead products on Intel 18A, Panther Lake (AI PC client processor) and Clearwater Forest (server processor), are out of the fab and have powered-on and booted operating systems. These milestones were achieved less than two quarters after tape-out, with both products on track to start production in 2025. The company also announced that the first external customer is expected to tape out on Intel 18A in the first half of next year.

"We are pioneering multiple systems foundry technologies for the AI era and delivering a full stack of innovation that's essential to the next generation of products for Intel and our foundry customers. We are encouraged by our progress and are working closely with customers to bring Intel 18A to market in 2025." -Kevin O'Buckley, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Foundry Services

Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has confirmed that the upcoming 18A process of the Panther Lake CPU generation is on schedule for a mid-2025 release, which aligns with the initial projection. This development marks a significant milestone in the company's ongoing efforts to integrate AI capabilities into its processors. The mid-2025 release date is expected to follow the debut of Intel's Arrow Lake process in late 2024 or early 2025, a release that holds the promise of significant advancements in AI computing. During Intel's Q1 2024 Quarterly Results, Gelsinger expressed confidence in the company's AI capabilities, stating that the Core Ultra platform currently delivers leadership AI performance and that the next-generation platforms, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake, will launch later this year, tripling AI performance. He also mentioned that the Panther Lake generation, set to release in 2025, will grow AI performance up to an additional 2x.

The Panther Lake generation represents the culmination of three generations of work in a short time and is expected to continue Intel's iterative approach. This transition is marked by a shift from a hybrid architecture, a combination of different types of processors, to a disaggregated die, where different components of the processor are separated, as AI computing becomes increasingly prominent. This strategic move is aimed at optimizing AI performance and flexibility. This marks the third generation of the Intel Core Ultra series, following Ultra 100 (Meteor Lake), Ultra 200 (Arrow Lake), and Lunar Lake (200V). Intel's release strategy mirrors the pattern set by the Hybrid Architecture, with Alder Lake debuting in 2021, followed by Raptor Lake in 2022, and a refreshed Raptor Lake released last year to bridge the gap until LGA 1851 was ready. However, Intel's roadmap has seen adjustments in the past, such as the initial promise of an Arrow Lake release before the end of 2024, which was later retracted. The mid-2025 release of Panther Lake aligns with rumors of Arrow Lake's late 2024 or early 2025 debut, suggesting that the 18A process CPU generation could debut several months after Arrow Lake.

Intel Core Ultra "Lunar Lake-MX" will be the company's bulwark against Apple's M-series Pro and Max chips, designed to power the next crop of performance ultraportables. The MX codename extension denotes MoP (memory-on-package), which sees stacked LPDDR5X memory chips share the package's fiberglass substrate with the chip, to conserve PCB footprint, and give Intel greater control over the right kind of memory speed, timings, and power-management features suited to its microarchitecture. This is essentially what Apple does with its M-series SoCs powering its MacBooks and iPad Pros. Igor's Lab scored the motherlode on the way Intel has restructured the various components across its chiplets, and the various I/O wired to the package.

When compared to "Meteor Lake," the "Lunar Lake" microarchitecture sees a small amount of "re-aggregation" of the various logic-heavy components of the processor. On "Meteor Lake," the CPU cores and the iGPU sat on separate tiles—Compute tile and Graphics tile, respectively, with a large SoC tile sitting between them, and a smaller I/O tile that serves as an extension of the SoC tile. All four tiles sat on top of a Foveros base tile, which is essentially an interposer—a silicon die that facilitates high-density microscopic wiring between the various tiles that are placed on top of it. With "Lunar Lake," there are only two tiles—the Compute tile, and the SoC tile.

Intel and Arm have signed a memorandum of understanding that finalizes the Emerging Business Initiative, their collaboration to support the startup community. The initiative builds on the April 2023 multi-generation agreement to enable chip designers to build low-power compute system-on-chips (SoCs) on the Intel 18A process. Together, the companies will provide essential intellectual property (IP) and manufacturing support, while also making financial assistance available, to foster innovation and growth for startups developing a range of devices and servers built on Arm-based SoCs and manufactured by Intel Foundry. The Emerging Business Initiative was announced last month at Intel Foundry Direct Connect in San Jose, California.

"Intel Foundry and Arm share the belief that for technology to benefit everyone, the building blocks of innovation must be available to anyone. Startups play a crucial role in bringing the great promise of transformations like AI to reality. The Emerging Business Initiative provides a path for new companies to leverage leading-edge Arm-based SoCs and Intel Foundry's global manufacturing capabilities to make their ideas real," said Stuart Pann, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Foundry Services.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced today that Intel and the U.S. Department of Commerce have signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms (PMT) for up to $8.5 billion in direct funding to Intel for commercial semiconductor projects under the CHIPS and Science Act. CHIPS Act funding aims to increase U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and research and development capabilities, especially in leading-edge semiconductors. Intel is the only American company that both designs and manufactures leading-edge logic chips. The proposed funding would help advance Intel's critical semiconductor manufacturing and research and development projects at its sites in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon, where the company develops and produces many of the world's most advanced chips and semiconductor packaging technologies.

"Today is a defining moment for the U.S. and Intel as we work to power the next great chapter of American semiconductor innovation," said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. "AI is supercharging the digital revolution and everything digital needs semiconductors. CHIPS Act support will help to ensure that Intel and the U.S. stay at the forefront of the AI era as we build a resilient and sustainable semiconductor supply chain to power our nation's future."

Intel is revamping its foundry play, and the company is set on its goals of becoming a strong contender to rivals such as TSMC and Samsung. Under Pat Gelsinger's lead, Intel recently split (virtually, under the same company) its units into Intel Product and Intel Foundry. During the SPIE 2024 conference for optics and photonics, Anne Kelleher, Intel's senior vice president, revealed that the 14A (1.4 nm) process offers a 15% performance-per-watt improvement over the company's 18A (1.8 nanometers) process. Additionally, the enhanced 14A-E process boasts a further 5% performance boost from the regular A14 node, being a small refresh. Intel's 14A process is set to be the first to utilize High-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) equipment, delivering a 20% increase in transistor logic density compared to the 18A node.

The company's aggressive pursuit of next-generation processes poses a significant threat to Samsung Electronics, which currently holds the second position in the foundry market. As part of its IDM 2.0 strategy, Intel hopes to reclaim its position as a leading foundry player and surpass Samsung by 2030. The company's collaboration with American companies, such as Microsoft, further solidifies its ambitions. Intel has already secured a $15 billion chip production contract with Microsoft for its 1.8 nm 18A process. The semiconductor industry is closely monitoring Intel's progress, as the company's advancements in process technology could potentially reshape the competitive landscape. With Samsung planning to mass-produce 2 nm process products next year, the race for dominance in the foundry market is heating up.

Cadence's digital and custom/analog flows are certified on the Intel 18A process technology. Cadence design IP supports this node from Intel Foundry, and the corresponding process design kits (PDKs) are delivered to accelerate the development of a wide variety of low-power consumer, high-performance computing (HPC), AI and mobile computing designs. Customers can now begin using the production-ready Cadence design flows and design IP to achieve design goals and speed up time to market.

"Intel Foundry is very excited to expand our partnership with Cadence to enable key markets for the leading-edge Intel 18A process technology," said Rahul Goyal, Vice President and General Manager, Product and Design Ecosystem, Intel Foundry. "We will leverage Cadence's world-class portfolio of IP, AI design technologies, and advanced packaging solutions to enable high-volume, high-performance, and power-efficient SoCs in Intel Foundry's most advanced process technology. Cadence is an indispensable partner supporting our IDM2.0 strategy and the Intel Foundry ecosystem."

Intel Corp. today launched Intel Foundry as a more sustainable systems foundry business designed for the AI era and announced an expanded process roadmap designed to establish leadership into the latter part of this decade. The company also highlighted customer momentum and support from ecosystem partners - including Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens and Ansys - who outlined their readiness to accelerate Intel Foundry customers' chip designs with tools, design flows and IP portfolios validated for Intel's advanced packaging and Intel 18A process technologies.

The announcements were made at Intel's first foundry event, Intel Foundry Direct Connect, where the company gathered customers, ecosystem companies and leaders from across the industry. Among the participants and speakers were U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Arm CEO Rene Haas, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others.

Pat Gelsinger—CEO of Intel Corporation—happily revealed late last month, during an earnings call: "Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly." The former is positioned as the natural successor to Team Blue's many-times-delayed Xeon "Sierra Forest" (all E-Core) processor family. Intel's second generation E-core Xeon "Clearwater Forest" design is expected to launch in 2025, with a deployment of "Darkmont" efficiency-oriented cores. Official product roadmaps and patch notes have revealed basic "Clearwater Forest" information, but we have not seen many leaks. Bionic_Squash has a history of releasing strictly internal Intel presentation slides—Meteor Lake (MTL-S) desktop SKUs were uncovered last April.

Their latest discovery does not include any photo or documented evidence—Bionic_Squash's concise social media post stated: "Clearwater Forest uses 3D stacking with hybrid bonding." This claim points to the possible deployment of Foveros Direct advanced packaging—this technology was expected to be ready at some point within the second half of 2023, although a mid-December technology showcase implied that things were behind schedule. The fanciest "Clearwater Forest" Xeon processors could arrive with a maximum total of 288 E-core count (and 288 threads)—according to Wccftech analysis: "The CPU package is going to consist of a base tile on top of the interposer which is connected through a high-speed I/O, EMIB, and the cores will be sitting on the topmost layer...Foveros Direct technology will allow direct copper-to-copper bonding, enabling low resistance interconnects and around 10-micron bump pitches. Intel itself states that Foveros Direct will blur the boundary between where the wafer ends and the package begins."

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Cadence Design Systems Inc. today announced a multiyear strategic agreement to jointly develop a portfolio of key customized intellectual property (IP), optimized design flows and techniques for Intel 18A process technology featuring RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery. Joint customers of the companies will be able to accelerate system-on-chip (SoC) project schedules on process nodes from Intel 18A and beyond while optimizing for performance, power, area, bandwidth and latency for demanding artificial intelligence, high performance computing and premium mobile applications.

"We're very excited to expand our partnership with Cadence to grow the IP ecosystem for IFS and provide choice for customers," said Stuart Paann, Intel senior vice president and general manager of IFS. "We will leverage Cadence's world-class portfolio of leading IP and advanced design solutions to enable our customers to deliver high-volume, high-performance and power-efficient SoCs on Intel's leading-edge process technologies."

According to a Bloomberg report, Intel is seeking to raise at least $2 billion in equity funding from investors for expanding its fabrication facility in Leixlip, Ireland, known as Fab 34. The chipmaker has hired an advisor to find potential investors interested in providing capital for the project. Fab 34 is currently Intel's only chip plant in Europe that uses cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. It produces processors on the Intel 4 process node, including compute tiles for Meteor Lake client CPUs and expected future Xeon data center chips. While $2 billion alone cannot finance the construction of an entirely new fab today, it can support meaningful expansion or upgrades of existing capacity. Intel likely aims to grow Fab 34's output and/or transition it to more advanced 3 nm-class technologies like Intel 3, Intel 20A, or Intel 18A.

Expanding production aligns with Intel's needs for its own products and its Intel Foundry Services business, providing contract manufacturing. Intel previously secured a $15 billion investment from Brookfield Infrastructure for its Arizona fabs in exchange for a 49% stake, demonstrating the company's willingness to partner to raise capital for manufacturing projects. The Brookfield deal also set a precedent of using outside financing to supplement Intel's own spending budget. It provided $15 billion in effectively free cash flow Intel can redirect to other priorities like new fabs without increasing debt. Intel's latest fundraising efforts for the Ireland site follow a similar equity investment model that leverages outside capital to support its manufacturing expansion plans. Acquiring High-NA EUV machinery for manufacturing is costly, as these machines can reach up to $380 million alone.

ASML has revealed that its cutting-edge High-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) chipmaking tools, called High-NA Twinscan EXE, will cost around $380 million each—over twice as much as its existing Low-NA EUV lithography systems that cost about $183 million. The company has taken 10-20 initial orders from the likes of Intel and SK Hynix and plans to manufacture 20 High-NA systems annually by 2028 to meet demand. The High-NA EUV technology represents a major breakthrough, enabling an improved 8 nm imprint resolution compared to 13 nm with current Low-NA EUV tools. This allows chipmakers to produce transistors that are nearly 1.7 times smaller, translating to a threefold increase in transistor density on chips. Attaining this level of precision is critical for manufacturing sub-3 nm chips, an industry goal for 2025-2026. It also eliminates the need for complex double patterning techniques required presently.

However, superior performance comes at a cost - literally and figuratively. The hefty $380 million price tag for each High-NA system introduces financial challenges for chipmakers. Additionally, the larger High-NA tools require completely reconfiguring chip fabrication facilities. Their halved imaging field also necessitates rethinking chip designs. As a result, adoption timelines differ across companies - Intel intends to deploy High-NA EUV at an advanced 1.8 nm (18A) node, while TSMC is taking a more conservative approach, potentially implementing it only in 2030 and not rushing the use of these lithography machines, as the company's nodes are already developing well and on time. Interestingly, the installation process of ASML's High-NA Twinscan EXE 150,000-kilogram system required 250 crates, 250 engineers, and six months to complete. So, production is as equally complex as the installation and operation of this delicate machinery.

Faraday Technology Corporation, a Taiwanese silicon IP designer, has announced plans to develop a new 64-core system-on-chip (SoC) utilizing Intel's most advanced 18A process technology. The Arm-based SoC will integrate Arm Neoverse compute subsystems (CSS) to deliver high performance and efficiency for data centers, infrastructure edge, and 5G networks. This collaboration brings together Faraday, Arm, and Intel Foundry Services. Faraday will leverage its ASIC design and IP solutions expertise to build the SoC. Arm will provide the Neoverse compute subsystem IP to enable scalable computing. Intel Foundry Services will manufacture the chip using its cutting-edge 18A process, which delivers one of the best-in-class transistor performance.

The new 64-core SoC will be a key component of Faraday's upcoming SoC evaluation platform. This platform aims to accelerate customer development of data center servers, high-performance computing ASICs, and custom SoCs. The platform will also incorporate interface IPs from the Arm Total Design ecosystem for complete implementation and verification. Both Arm and Intel Foundry Services expressed excitement about working with Faraday on this advanced Arm-based custom silicon project. "We're thrilled to see industry leaders like Faraday and Intel on the cutting edge of Arm-based custom silicon development," said an Arm spokesperson. Intel SVP Stuart Pann said, "We are pleased to work with Faraday in the development of the SoC based on Arm Neoverse CSS utilizing our most competitive Intel 18A process technology." The collaboration represents Faraday's strategic focus on leading-edge technologies to meet evolving application requirements. With its extensive silicon IP portfolio and design capabilities, Faraday wants to deliver innovative solutions and break into next-generation computing design.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corporation, has outlined future performance expectations for the company's Core range of processors. In a recent fourth quarter 2023 earnings call he declared: "The Core Ultra platform delivers leadership AI performance today with our next-generation platforms launching later this year, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake tripling our AI performance. In 2025 with Panther Lake, we will grow AI performance up to an additional 2x." Team Blue's Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processors arrived right at the tail end of last year, as a somewhat delayed answer to AMD's Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APU series—both leveraging their own AI-crunching NPU technologies. Gelsinger believes that the launch of Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake Core product lines will bring significant (3x) AI processing improvements over Meteor Lake. He seemed to confident in a delay-free release schedule for the new year and beyond: "We are first in the industry to have incorporated both gate-all-around and backside power delivery in a single process node, the latter unexpected two years ahead of our competition. Arrow Lake, our lead Intel 20A vehicle will launch this year."

He proceeded to gush about their next node advancement: "Intel 18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half 2024, completing our five nodes in four year journey and bringing us back to process leadership. I am pleased to say that Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly." Industry experts posit that Core "Panther Lake" parts could borrow elements from the next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" efficiency-focused family—possibly the latter's "Darkmont" E-cores, to accompany "Cougar Cove" P-cores. The Intel CEO is quite excited about the manufacturing outlay for 2025: "I'll just say, hey, we look at this every single day and we're scrutinizing carefully our progress on 18A. And obviously the great news that we just described those Clearwater Forest taping out, that gives us a lot of confidence that 18A is healthy. That's a major product for us. Panther Lake following that shortly."

Intel at the 2023 InnovatiON event surprised audiences with a live demo of a reference notebook powered by a Core "Lunar Lake" processor. What's surprising about this is that "Lunar Lake" won't come out until 2025 (at least), and succeeds not just the upcoming "Meteor Lake" architecture, but also its succeeding "Arrow Lake," which debuts in 2024. Intel is expected to debut "Meteor Lake" some time later this year. What's also surprising is that Intel has proven that the Intel 18A foundry node works. The Compute tile of "Lunar Lake" is expected to be based on Intel 18A, which is four generations ahead of the current Intel 7, which will be succeeded by Intel 4, Intel 3, and Intel 20A along the way.

The demo focused on the generative AI capabilities of Intel's third generation NPU, the hardware backend of AI Boost. Using a local session of a tool similar to Stable Diffusion, the processor was made to generate the image of a giraffe wearing a hat; and a GPT program was made to pen the lyrics of a song in the genre of Taylor Swift from scratch. Both tasks were completed on stage using the chip's NPU, and in timeframes you'd normally expect from discrete AI accelerators or cloud-based services.

What's New: Intel today announced one of the industry's first glass substrates for next-generation advanced packaging, planned for the latter part of this decade. This breakthrough achievement will enable the continued scaling of transistors in a package and advance Moore's Law to deliver data-centric applications.

"After a decade of research, Intel has achieved industry-leading glass substrates for advanced packaging. We look forward to delivering these cutting-edge technologies that will benefit our key players and foundry customers for decades to come."
-Babak Sabi, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Assembly and Test Development

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Tower Semiconductor, a leading foundry for analog semiconductor solutions, today announced an agreement where Intel will provide foundry services and 300 mm manufacturing capacity to help Tower serve its customers globally. Under the agreement, Tower will utilize Intel's advanced manufacturing facility in New Mexico. Tower will invest up to $300 million to acquire and own equipment and other fixed assets to be installed in the New Mexico facility, providing a new capacity corridor of over 600,000 photo layers per month for Tower's future growth, enabling capacity to support forecasted customer demand for 300 mm advanced analog processing.

This agreement demonstrates the commitment from both Intel and Tower to expand their respective foundry footprints with unparalleled solutions and scaled capabilities. Intel will manufacture Tower's highly differentiated 65-nanometer power management BCD (bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) flows, among other flows at Intel's Fab 11X in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) today announced that it has mutually agreed with Tower Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TSEM) to terminate its previously disclosed agreement to acquire Tower due to the inability to obtain in a timely manner the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement, dated Feb. 15, 2022. In accordance with the terms of the merger agreement and in connection with its termination, Intel will pay a termination fee of $353 million to Tower.

"Our foundry efforts are critical to unlocking the full potential of IDM 2.0, and we continue to drive forward on all facets of our strategy," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. "We are executing well on our roadmap to regain transistor performance and power performance leadership by 2025, building momentum with customers and the broader ecosystem and investing to deliver the geographically diverse and resilient manufacturing footprint the world needs. Our respect for Tower has only grown through this process, and we will continue to look for opportunities to work together in the future."

Today, Intel announced a strategic collaboration agreement with Ericsson to utilize Intel's 18A process and manufacturing technology for Ericsson's future next-generation optimized 5G infrastructure. As part of the agreement, Intel will manufacture custom 5G SoCs (system-on-chip) for Ericsson to create highly differentiated leadership products for future 5G infrastructure. Additionally, the companies will expand their collaboration to optimize 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with Intel vRAN Boost for Ericsson's Cloud RAN (radio access network) solutions to help communications service providers increase network capacity and energy efficiency while gaining greater flexibility and scalability.

"As our work together evolves, this is a significant milestone with Ericsson to partner broadly on their next-generation optimized 5G infrastructure. This agreement exemplifies our shared vision to innovate and transform network connectivity, and it reinforces the growing customer confidence in our process and manufacturing technology," said Sachin Katti, senior vice president and general manager of the Network and Edge group at Intel. "We look forward to working together with Ericsson, an industry leader, to build networks that are open, reliable and ready for the future."