Intel may have finally gotten its 18A process node right, but it’s sure not resting on its laurels. The company CEO has announced two new process shrinks in the coming years.
Intel’s leading edge process technology is currently at 18A, or 1.8 nanometers, and 14A is in the works. CEO Lip-Bu Tan confirmed that the company has begun to work on its 10A and 7A fabrication technologies, which will succeed 18A and 14A sometime in the next decade.
“Now I am starting to work 10A, 7A, the roadmap,” Tan said in a discussion at JP Morgan’s Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference in New York. “People don’t go to you just one node. They’re looking for the roadmap for the future. So we want to build a long-term business.”
Intel has 18A process nodes in full production now but it is wasting no time with getting 14A U and running. Development is set to be proceeding as planned, with version 0.5 of the process design kit (PDK) already available and version 0.9 of the PDK due in October.
A PDK is a collection of files, models, and constraints provided by a semiconductor foundry. It describes exactly how transistors, interconnects, and other components behave in a given manufacturing process. Without a PDK, you cannot design a chip that a foundry can build. So to have a PDK means Intel is pretty far along in the development process.
“And we announced in Q1, we have 0.5 PDK so that they can do the test chip to look at our yield and see whether they can, over time, really design their product and fabricate with us. So we are making good progress,” Tan said.
The holy grail is 0.9 PDK, which Tan said Intel is looking at an October release to the outside customer, and internal customer will be earlier. Intel does not expect 14A production to begin until at least 2028.
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Originally published by Techstrong.IT. Republished with attribution.
