© INTEL, TSMC
YOU HAVE TO BE impressed with Intel’s ambition. It plans to put itself at the top of CPU development by 2025 by producing five nodes in four years. Given the company dropped the ball so often trying to move away from 10nm, we may scoff. But it appears the first step, the Intel 4 process, is now on track for production this year. The Intel 4 process is analogous to 7nm elsewhere and will debut on Meteor Lake chips, which will be 14thgeneration CPUs. These are Intel’s first tile-based designs and include diestacking to boot. That’s a lot of juicy new Intel technologies in one generation. Reportedly, Intel was to be ready for volume production of the mobile versions before the year’s end, but snags with the CPU tile might push that back until next year. Desktop chips will follow, then more die shrinks. Intel’s 18A process—that’s 18 Angstroms, which is a couple of nodes over Intel 4— is, according to CEO Pat Gelsinger, now six months ahead of schedule, and due in 2024. If all this pans out, this is truly breakneck development.