Now a bit over two years later, and Intel is just starting to see the first fruits from that aggressive roadmap, both in terms of technologies and customers. Products based on Intel’s first EUV-based node, Intel 4, are available in the market today, and its high-volume counterpart, Intel 3, is ready as well. Meanwhile, Intel is putting the final touches on its first Gate-All-Around (GAAFET)/RibbonFET for 2024 and 2025. It’s a heady time for the company, but it’s also a critical one. Intel has reached the point where they need to deliver on those promises – and they need to do so in a very visible way.
To that end, today Intel’s Foundry group – the artist formally known as Intel Foundry Services – is holding its first conference, Direct Connect. And even more than being a showcase for customers and press, this is Intel’s coming-out party for the fab industry as a whole, where Intel’s foundry (and only Intel’s foundry) gets the spotlight, a rarity in the massive business that is Intel.
Along with outlining Intel’s progress on meeting their 5 nodes in 4 years goal, Direct Connect is also Intel’s first chance to talk about what will come after those first 5 nodes. As Intel Foundry expands in capacity, customers, and tooling, the group is looking at a slate of not only even more advanced nodes, but also a slew of increasingly necessary packaging technologies to back them up. And while today’s event won’t match the overall audacity of Gelsinger’s 2021 proclamation, it’s still an important look at what’s in store over the next several years for the once (and future?) foundry king.
Altogether, there are several announcements of note here, so let’s dive right in.
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14A will be Intel’s first production use of High-Numerical Aperture (High-NA) EUV, the next generation of Extreme Ultraviolet lithography. High-NA EUV promises even finer features, allowing wafers to be processed without relying on multiple patterning, which is expected to become necessary with conventional EUV at smaller node sizes. Intel has just about bet their foundry business on High-NA, a sharp contrast from Intel being relatively late in the game to pick up EUV (Intel 4/Meteor Lake being their first product), to the point where Intel has secured the world’s sole prototype High-NA scanner.
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The long and short of matters here is that Intel is reiterating once more that the 4 year plan remains on track. Intel’s 4 year plan ended with 18A being production ready in 2025, and in 2024, customers can already begin designing chips for Intel’s most ambitious node.
Notably here, Intel has recently finished – and is announcing today – the tape-out for their own 18A lead product, Clearwater Forest. Clearwater is Intel’s second-generation E-core based Xeon (the successor to Sierra Forest), and is a tour de force of Intel foundry technologies. Besides 18A for the compute elements, Clearwater uses Intel 3 for its base die, EMIB for further die connetions, and even Foveros Direct (hybrid bonding) for those die-to-die connections. Clearwater will eventually be joined by the consumer Panther Lake as Intel’s first two big 18A projects.
With its combination of feature size, RibbonFET transistors, and PowerVia backside power delivery, Intel has previously stated that they expect to regain process leadership with 18A. And as of today’s event, that remains Intel’s projection for when they’ll return to the top.
Meanwhile, a bit closer to production, Intel is reporting that Intel 3, their high-volume EUV process node, is ready for high-volume manufacturing. It’s predecessor, Intel 4, is already shipping today for Meteor Lake, and intel 3 is the refined version of it with a full range of cell libraries available (rather than the high-performance-only Intel 4).
Given that Intel is only shipping products using the second of their 5 nodes at this point, there is no getting around the fact that, at least as an outside observer, a lot of Intel’s “on track” announcement is taking the company’s word for it. But given that Intel’s timeline from the very start has been based on internal (risk production) milestones and not product shipment milestones, it was never going to be any other way.
Still, absent Clearwater Forest chips in our hands today, the fact that they have designs taped out and are ready for customer designs is about as promising a sign as one could hope for.
But I suspect we’ll only see a 15% improvement at best.