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Another bites the dust. According to a new Reuters report, Intel’s Customer Become Business can largely abandon its most important 18A knot. Instead, Intel will retain 18A as an internal chip node as its forthcoming Panther Lake Laptop processor and will shift the focus on promoting its 14As for external customers.
If true, this follows the wholesale of Intel on the 20A node, along with limited walks on Intel 4 and Intel 3 (Intel will never and probably never make consumer processors on these nodes). While things are, you have to go back to 10 Nm, rebranded Intel 7, to find a knot that the company uses in its full portfolio of businesses and consumer chips. Intel, meanwhile, is paying Taiwanese Cover TSMC to make processors like its Lunar Lake laptop and Arrow Lake desk.
Reuters claims that the new CEO of Intel Lip Bun Tan said fears that his 18A knot was losing appeal to customers. “TAN’s preliminary response to this challenge: focus more resources on 14A, a next-generation chip process, where Intel expects to have advantages over TSMC of Taiwan,” said Reuters, adding that Intel weighs on whether to set aside 18As and its 18A-P variants 18A-P, producing processes that have aside internal sales of 18A and its 18A-P variants, producing processes that have consumption of millions of millions to develop.
As for the exact report of Reuters, Intel is now gently adjusted for the 18A knot expectations for several months. Already in May, Intel Financial Officer David ZinSner said: “We have always expected that the overwhelming amount of 18A will be internal.” In fact, in the same interview, Zinsner seemed to define the importance of Intel’s plans to make chips for customers.
When asked about Intel’s customers, the assumption that Intel’s Fabs would break even in 2027 and how much external business would require, Zinsner said: “This does not require a tone of foundation revenue, it is somewhere in the low billions of billions to be from some of the external sources. generations, such as Intel 16. So, this is not a tone that should come from 18A.
So far, all this remains a rumor. Moreover, the recording of Reuteter, when it comes to Intel operations, is not exactly flawless. The output claims that Intel and TSMC are working on a joint venture to manage former FABS, something that has not yet been done.