Intel Cancels Development of its 20A Manufacturing Process to Focus on 18A

He Intel 20A manufacturing process, which was originally going to bring to life the high-performance Arrow Lake “Core Ultra 200” processors, has been cancelled by the company itself and Intel’s new family of CPUs will be manufactured by third parties (TSMC will be the chosen one, a company that already manufactures Lunar Lake).

He abandonment of this process will allow the company to focus on its next advanced node, Intel 18A, and thus be able to have it ready even earlier than expected after devoting all the engineering resources that were dedicated to the 20A. The company hopes to be able to launch the first chips with this process during the next year 2025. Even so, those were the dates that were already being considered on their roadmaps, even with an arrival during this same year.

All the experience gained in the development of the Intel 20A and the yield -percentage of viable chips per wafer manufactured- will serve to improve chip manufacturing in 18A Looking ahead, the company itself claims that the path to the 18A process has been built on the foundations of the 20A process. Today, Intel says that with the 18A process they already achieve a defect rate of less than 0.40, so it is time to take the leap and focus on this node.

The Intal 18A process will inherit the company’s implementation of the transistor architecture achieved in the 20A RibbonFET GAA and the PowerVia system for power delivery, but all in a refined way for better chip performance.

Naturally, this measure will also serve to improve the company’s accounts, which are in a critical situation following the latest financial results, saving about $500 million.

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