Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has delivered a presentation at the Deutsche Bank’s 2023 Technology Conference(August 30, 2023) promising to restore Intel’s leadership in the chip fabrication pecking order. The company faced a series of setbacks as it tried to scale down its node technology from 14 nm to 10 nm over the past several years and watched Taiwanese-based TSMC take the lead in fabrication technology. TSMC’s largest customer is Apple, and the US-based chip giant has had to watch on as Apple not only started the process of dropping Intel’s chips from its Mac lineup in 2020, but it also had to watch on as Apple opted to utilize TSMC’s more advanced fabrication technology to make its new custom Mac silicon.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says Intel remains on track to regain the lead in node technnology in 2025

In fact, to keep its own chips competitive, Intel has actually contracted TSMC as well to fabricate parts of its next generation ‘Meteor Lake’ chips. While the CPU tile (like a chiplet) is fabricated using the ‘Intel 4’ node (7 nm), the GPU tile will use TSMC’s 5 nm node, while the SoC tile and IOE tile will both use TSMC’s 6 nm node. However, since Gelsinger took the helm of Intel in early 2021, one of his key objectives has been to restore Intel’s once dominant position as the market leading foundry. In Gelsinger’s presentation, he pointed to the fact that Intel is now 2.5 years into its transformation program and expects to retake market leadership in 2025 with its node technology.

To achieve this, Gelsinger told the conference that Intel is on track with its manufacturing roadmap of 5 nodes in four years, regaining process leadership in 2025 with the 18A node, as reported by Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin. Gelsinger added that following on from Meteor Lake (expected to be launched later this month), Intel will be ramping its Intel 3 process (5 nm) “soon”. Perhaps more excitingly – and tantalizingly – Gelsinger said that Intel has received a large customer pre-payment for its 18A node (1.8 nm) that has already been successfully taped out and is on track for 2025.

One can only speculate as to which company this “large customer” is. TSMC also claims it is on track for its own 2 nm process node in 2025 and already enjoys the patronage of major customers including Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, MediaTek along with Apple. Undoubtedly, Intel will be keen to secure at least one of these companies as it helps with its own economies of scale as investing in each of these new process nodes is a multi-billion-dollar endeavor. In the end, the competition in the foundry sector is great for customers as it is driving the delivery of faster, but also more efficient chips.

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