In case you haven’t been paying attention, Intel has been getting banged up lately in both the press and on Wall Street. Over the last 12 months, it’s lost just under 43% of its share value as well as its CEO, Pat Gelsinger. It’s watched Nvidia and AMD make major gains in the data center market at its expense, and its most recent client processors, the Intel Core Ultra 200S series, were rather underwhelming, especially for gaming.
Probably the biggest concern for Intel was its Q3 2024 earnings, which saw the company post a staggering $16.6 billion loss, the largest the company had ever seen. And while this was generated almost entirely by accelerated depreciation charges and the restructuring required after laying off 15,000 workers, rather than products sitting unsold on the store shelves, it still went off like a bomb on Wall Street and in Washington, where talk about how Intel could be “saved” remains rampant.
A lot of this talk has centered on Intel Foundry, the division of the company that actually manufactures semiconductors. Under Gelsinger, Intel invested billions of dollars into developing leading-edge process technology that could compete with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which manufactures chips for AMD, Apple, Nvidia, and even Intel, among many others.
So far, those efforts haven’t borne fruit, and there have been many, many calls for Intel to dump its foundry business and focus on designing processors and outsourcing the actual manufacturing to TSMC.
All of this makes the newest process technology from Intel Foundry, Intel 18A, a make-or-break proposition for Team Blue, and no matter where you stand on the AMD vs Intel vs Nvidia, you should hope that Intel pulls off a miracle here.
What is a process node and what makes Intel 18A so special?
Process node technology is very in-the-weeds stuff, and for someone looking to buy the best laptop or best processor for their PC, the question of which process node a chip was fabricated on rarely enters the discussion, even among tech enthusiasts.
A process node is the set of specific manufacturing processes used to fabricate a silicon wafer containing the chips that go into computers, as well as different innovations and features these chips include.
Traditionally, these nodes are referred to by a specific nanometer designation, i.e., a 3nm node, that is used to represent the physical length of the transistor gate. Over the last decade, though, these designations have become more marketing than anything, and the nanometer designation isn’t directly tied to the physical size of the transistors.
Rather these designations say that a chip performs as well as a specific nanometer chip would if it were possible to produce transistors at such small scales, which nowadays is largely impossible (welcome to the end of Moore’s Law). Now, these designations largely represent generational leaps in technology, and TSMC’s process technology is currently the best there is.
But where and by whom the chip that powers your PC or graphics card is made can affect everything from its price to its availability. Right now, the vast majority of advanced computer chips, whether laptop processors or data center chips are manufactured by TSMC, with its most advanced N3 process node being in the most demand.
TSMC’s next-gen process node, N2, is slated for volume production sometime in 2025, meaning it will be making production chips for AMD, Apple, Nvidia, and others later this year. The ‘2’ in N2 is meant to represent 2nm, which puts it well beyond anything rival Samsung or Intel foundries have been able to produce.
Intel Foundry’s 18A process, meanwhile, is a 1.8nm process, making it even more advanced than TSMC’s. If Intel can deliver on the promises it has made about 18A, it would be the most advanced process technology in the world and would immediately upend the chip fabrication industry.
The fact that these chips would be produced in the United States makes the proposition even more enticing for American companies like Apple who have faced longstanding criticism over their offshore manufacturing and supply chain.
The most important result of Intel 18A’s success for consumers, though, would be the long-term decrease in advanced chip prices and a more stable supply across several industries dependent on these advanced chips.
The COVID-19-driven supply chain issues in 2020 and 2021 revealed a real weakness in the globalized production model. While globalization has (mostly) led to lower prices for consumers, COVID showed that it only works when everything is running smoothly. Any disruption in one of the links in the supply chain can be felt for years in terms of higher prices and lower stock of the products we want to buy.
Having nearly all our advanced semiconductor supply tied to Taiwan is a recipe for disaster
Taiwan is a lovely country and it deserves all of the prosperity its semiconductor industry has brought to its people. But it is also a geopolitical crisis point vis-a-vis China, which believes Taiwan belongs under mainland rule.
This potential conflict over Taiwan means the global supply of the most advanced semiconductors could be threatened.
The existing status quo benefits Taiwan, as its semiconductor industry acts as a ‘silicon shield‘ for the island, but for the rest of us, we’re pretty much depending on China and the US to not escalate a conflict that, in even the best case scenario, could cripple the flow of advanced chips that the modern global economy depends on.
Reducing this dependence on TSMC is reason enough to want Intel 18A to succeed. If Intel can provide a genuine alternative for the most in-demand chip technology with the stability that comes from US production, it’ll provide valuable insulation for the global economy and inject much-needed competition into the chip fabrication industry, bringing prices down for everyone.
What would 18A mean for Intel?
Beyond the geopolitical issues, a successful rollout and adoption of 18A among industry customers like AMD, Nvidia, and possibly even Apple, would be a massive source of revenue for Intel separate from its own processor business, as well as providing an ‘in-house’ manufacturer of its processors, lowering their cost and giving it a competitive advantage over rival AMD.
Understandably, Intel is very bullish on 18A. It has to be since the future success of the company relies on 18A delivering the kind of performance that industry customers need, especially as AI is placing extraordinary demands on existing hardware.
If Intel 18A fails to establish Intel Foundry as a serious competitor to TSMC, it will likely be spun off as Wall Street is demanding. Without the support of the Intel Client side of the business to help it ramp up, it’ll likely never reach the kind of advanced node technology that TSMC has, leaving us all dependent on a single supplier for cutting-edge chips and all the vulnerabilities and added cost that entails.
