"We are seeing significant progress being made on foundry, with 18A yields improving to over 60% and good enough to ramp Panther Lake," Vinh and Rosumny said. "While not best in class, as TSMC (TSM) was at 70-80% when it launched 2nm, with INTC's aspirations of being the #2 foundry supplier, 60%+ yield is significantly better than SF2 at Samsung Foundry, which we believe is less than 40%."
KeyBanc's TSMC/Intel/Samsung yield benchmark (1/13/2026)
- Thread starter Fred Chen
- Start date
MKWVentures
Moderator
So these yields are wafer probe yields? backend test yield? are the probe yields KGD? (so backend yields are super high?
It looks like they were comparing process yields. Backend would not be 18A-specific.
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From the Investor call:
While yields are in line with our internal plans, they are still below what I want them to be.
Accelerating yield improvement will be an important lever in 2026 as we look to better support our customers. As I said earlier, we are on the multi-year journey. It will take time and resolve, but my team and I are committed to rebuilding this iconic American company and increasing the long-term value for our shareholders.
And so once visibility improves there, we’ll start to unlock the spend on 14A. I can just add a little bit more. I think on the yield improvement, we see 7%, 8% yield improvement per month. I think it’s more in focus in the variation, make sure that we can be more consistent delivery, and also the defect density at the end so that we can ship quality wafer to the customer. So I think all those are very important for our PC client, Panther Lake, and then also for the 18A and 14A development. So I think all in all, I see improvement, but still not quite to the industry leading standard yet.
So it’s parallelly on the IP readiness and also our yield readiness. Then they starting to satisfy, "Okay, now this product, this is a volume we’re going to run with you, and that’s how you’re starting to build." So in terms of 14A, realistically, in terms of I call it the risk production in the later part of 2027 and real production, volume production in 2028. That is similar to the same timeframe as a leading foundry.
While yields are in line with our internal plans, they are still below what I want them to be.
Accelerating yield improvement will be an important lever in 2026 as we look to better support our customers. As I said earlier, we are on the multi-year journey. It will take time and resolve, but my team and I are committed to rebuilding this iconic American company and increasing the long-term value for our shareholders.
And so once visibility improves there, we’ll start to unlock the spend on 14A. I can just add a little bit more. I think on the yield improvement, we see 7%, 8% yield improvement per month. I think it’s more in focus in the variation, make sure that we can be more consistent delivery, and also the defect density at the end so that we can ship quality wafer to the customer. So I think all those are very important for our PC client, Panther Lake, and then also for the 18A and 14A development. So I think all in all, I see improvement, but still not quite to the industry leading standard yet.
So it’s parallelly on the IP readiness and also our yield readiness. Then they starting to satisfy, "Okay, now this product, this is a volume we’re going to run with you, and that’s how you’re starting to build." So in terms of 14A, realistically, in terms of I call it the risk production in the later part of 2027 and real production, volume production in 2028. That is similar to the same timeframe as a leading foundry.
MKWVentures
Moderator
this was a very long winded response to 2 simple questions
1) How much revenue do you need from external to claim some success (no answer)
2) when will you have that revenue. (2028 it starts}. reminder, Intel claimed risk production in April on Panther lake. Revenue started 9 months later.
The Intel product groups are not happy with IFS.