Intel Races To Catch Rivals as AI Boom Supercharges Chip Competition

U.S. chip group Intel is on track to deliver five upgrades to its advanced manufacturing process in four years, CEO Pat Gelsinger said on Tuesday as the company faces pressure to reassure PC and server-making clients that its technology will remain competitive. From a report: Speaking at Intel Innovation Day in Taipei, Gelsinger said the company's most advanced chip design, the 18A, will move into the test production phase by the first quarter of 2024. "For 18A, we have many test wafers coming out at this moment," the CEO said. "The invention phase of the 18A is now complete, and now we're racing to production."

This production node represents Intel's big bet to reclaim semiconductor manufacturing leadership by 2025. The company also announced it will use this production technology to make chips for outside customers such as Ericsson, instead of using it only for its own products. Its two biggest rivals, Samsung of South Korea and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., are racing to put their own most advanced chips into production in 2025. These 2-nanometer chips are seen as being at a similar level as Intel's 18A. Gelsinger said his company has been aggressively pursuing its "five nodes in four years" plan since he returned to the company in 2021. It usually takes at least two years for a chipmaker to move forward to a new production node.

Intel's 18A: The Gambit

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Looks like Intel's gearing up for their own 'Lord of the Chips' trilogy – where the Fellowship of the Wafers embarks on an epic quest to reclaim the throne of Silicon. They've plotted a roadmap straight out of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, complete with quests, mythical 18A beasts, and probably a few dragons aka market competitors. Here's to hoping their Gandalf, I mean Gelsinger, doesn't pull a 'you shall not pass' with product deadlines. May the Silicon Force be with them.

The faster you run, the faster ...

[Big Bipper]

The faster you run, the faster you dodge and weave, the more likely you are to stumble. Almost makes you wanna cry.

AI?

[LostMyBeaver]

What does AI have to do with it?

AI runs just fine on larger node processes. Using chiplets 10nm can be produced with near 100% yield. Performance-wise, 10nm vs 2nm makes little difference since parallelism is everything. Massive cache or HBM is pretty important, but memory tech is often on older nodes for reliability.

If I were to design a neural networking core, I'd hope for smaller nodes but design for bigger as it would give me leverage negotiating. I'd start by choosing a memory architecture for 24GB. Mi