Intel scraps 18A process for Arrow Lake, goes with ‘external nodes’ likely TSMC

In what could easily be construed as a stunning setback for Intel’s foundry initiative and its vaunted plan to deliver five nodes in four years, the company announced today that it no longer plans to use its own 20A process node with its upcoming Arrow Lake processors. Instead, it will use TSMC nodes for all of the compute tiles, and then merely package the chips together.

Intel says its 18A node remains on track and it has now shifted engineering resources from Intel 20A to the newer 18A node to optimize engineering resources. As such, it appears that Intel will now leapfrog over its 20A process entirely to avoid the capital expenditures required to bring the node to full production. The announcement occurs as Intel continues to layoff 15,000 workers in the largest workforce reduction in the company’s 56-year history as it embarks on a vast restructuring that comes amid troubling financial results last quarter quarter. 

The Intel 20A node was never planned for many products due to the company’s fast-track move to the more advanced 18A node.

Intel’s 20A brought several new advances to the table, like  RibbonFet Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology, which is Intel’s first new transistor design since FinFET arrived in 2011. Intel’s design features four stacked nanosheets, each surrounded entirely by a gate. It also marked the debut of the company’s  PowerVia backside power delivery tech, which routes power for the transistors through the backside of the processor die.  

This is breaking news…more to come.