TECH TALK
Intel Taps TSMC for its Lunar Lake CPUs
INTEL WAS THE LEADER in microprocessor manufacturing technology for decades, but the soon to be released Lunar Lake processors will primarily be produced using technology from TSMC. It’s not the first time Intel has used another company’s process technology, but it’s the latest CPU cores being produced elsewhere. And that’s only the start of the changes.
Jarred Walton
The simple explanation for the use of TSMC’s N3B node for the main compute tile is it was better than what Intel had in the design phase of Lunar Lake. Intel stalled on 14nm process technology for what seemed like ages—it was first used in the 4th Gen Haswell chips in 2014, and extended to the 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPUs in 2021. TSMC passed Intel, and is now considered the leading foundry for semiconductor manufacturing. To prevent similar issues, Intel has altered how it creates new chips.