What is really going on with Intel’s 18a process?

[kevin01]

Kevin01 Said: "It is kind of laughable that Intel competitors won't use IFS. If IFS offers the best tech, and your competitors are using it to outrun you, you will be FORCED to use it, too."





If Intel is best, Of course people will use them. The question is whether Intel has the best tech and foundry services (delivery/price/PDK).

Perhaps we should wait to see how Intel is delivering actual products and processes before assuming Intel has leadership.

IBM announced leading 2nm GAA product in 2021 so perhaps IBM and Rapidus are the true leaders?

Lets see what happens.

I agree with what you said. That is why I said "technology leadership first, $$s will follow". And leadership includes performance and cost. We will have to wait and see how 18A progresses in the next few quarters.

Now, back to "competitors", I would argue there are many kinds of competitors, AMD is probably Intel product team's No.1 competitor, head-to-head on many product lines. But other than AMD, I can see the rest happily becoming IFS customers (if IFS is indeed the best), especially the ARM based chip makers.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Now, back to "competitors", I would argue there are many kinds of competitors, AMD is probably Intel product team's No.1 competitor, head-to-head on many product lines. But other than AMD, I can see the rest happily becoming IFS customers (if IFS is indeed the best), especially the ARM based chip makers.

Companies like Amphere (former Intel), Groq (former Google), Cerebras (former AMD), and the many other companies trying to break into the AI chip market?

It goes back to the Trusted Foundry issue. I think IFS will need to differentiate in a different manner if they are going to poach TSMC customers that compete with Intel. I really like the Systems Foundry concept. I would like to explore that a bit more. Stay tuned.

 

[kevin01]

You can make exactly the same argument in reverse.

If you were the current combined (design + fabs) Intel and had the best tech, why would you offer it to competitors of Intel (design) [on the same terms, costs and schedules] ?

Equally, how much better would Intel foundry need to be vs TSMC for it to be worth the additional risk of working with a competitor ?

I suggest the cost of switching from TSMC to IFS is significantly higher than simply having slightly better tech. To adapt what they used to say about IBM, no ones going to get fired for buying from TSMC.

frenemy relationship is the norm in the IT industry, and it is very healthy. Just look at AWS and oracle standing together this week. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/orac...rship-with-amazon-web-services-160000398.html

Also, in a few years, I can totally see Intel splitting up into several companies when it is in a position of strength to do so.

 

[MKWVentures]

Companies like Amphere (former Intel), Groq (former Google), Cerebras (former AMD), and the many other companies trying to break into the AI chip market?

It goes back to the Trusted Foundry issue. I think IFS will need to differentiate in a different manner if they are going to poach TSMC customers that compete with Intel. I really like the Systems Foundry concept. I would like to explore that a bit more. Stay tuned.

Intel uses TSMC even though they are a competitor, because it helps intel. Apple uses Samsung for memory and used to use them for foundry.

If it helps the company, they will use IFS. IMO the issue is Intel execution, not people not wanting to use IFS. People will use IFS if they can execute and help the company. As Zinsner mentioned, they will be a backup for a while

 

[semiman]

Companies like Amphere (former Intel), Groq (former Google), Cerebras (former AMD), and the many other companies trying to break into the AI chip market?

It goes back to the Trusted Foundry issue. I think IFS will need to differentiate in a different manner if they are going to poach TSMC customers that compete with Intel. I really like the Systems Foundry concept. I would like to explore that a bit more. Stay tuned.

True. I think there are chances which Intel can use. Companies like groq needs tons of on-die SRAM since they're aiming for ultra-low latency language models. Since NVIDIA and AMD are using traditional HBM + GPU approach, it's more like pay more to foundries VS pay to memory companies. So if Intel manages to mass produce decent sized dies and offers decent price cuts then it will work. PPA might not be the best in the market, but SRAM-based solutions are different beasts so they might find some niche market, enough to allow products to survive with sub-par process + cheaper manufacturing cost.

 

[DougDD]

Of course Cadence and Synopys are backing every [viable] horse in the foundry race. Not least since Intel are paying them significant amounts to do this enablement work. And this sort of development work increases their EDA licence usage (and revenues) whether it results in production silicon or not. Provided they have the engineering resources to support this (Intel), they'd be mad not to.

That's easy to say but it doesn't make sense in practical terms. For example, for Synopsys to say
how well Intel is doing and then IF customers find out otherwise, Synopsys doesn't look good.
And that's risky for a company that works in a field that demands precision.

Shankar Krishnamoorthy, general manager of the EDA Group at Synopsys, said, “It’s great to see Intel Foundry hitting these
critical milestones. With 18A now customer-ready, Intel Foundry is bringing together the necessary components needed to
design next-generation AI solutions that our mutual customers require and expect. Synopsys plays a mission-critical role
as an on-ramp to the world’s foundries, and we are proud to work with Intel Foundry to enable Synopsys’ leading EDA
and IP solutions for their leading-edge process.”>>

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...ndry-achieves-major-milestones.html#gs.eyi4tl

 

[hist78]

frenemy relationship is the norm in the IT industry, and it is very healthy. Just look at AWS and oracle standing together this week. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/orac...rship-with-amazon-web-services-160000398.html

Also, in a few years, I can totally see Intel splitting up into several companies when it is in a position of strength to do so.

The frenemy situation between Oracle, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon AWS is different from Intel Foundry potentially making chips for Nvidia.

To Oracle, Azure and AWS are service delivery platforms in addition to Oracle's own cloud services. It’s no different from the Amazon shopping site carrying Amazon's Ring doorbell, Google's doorbell, and many other companies' smart doorbells.

Oracle develops and completes its own software products in-house and then sends them to Azure, AWS, or any other cloud service providers to be accessed by as many end users as possible.

If, for any reason, Azure and AWS stop offering services to Oracle, Oracle still has its software and can continue improving and selling it. Oracle can also choose to deliver it through other platforms if necessary. It's not a life-threatening situation.

However, it is much more complicated if Intel Foundry makes Nvidia chips.

 

[tooLongInEDA]

That's easy to say but it doesn't make sense in practical terms. For example, for Synopsys to say
how well Intel is doing and then IF customers find out otherwise, Synopsys doesn't look good.
And that's risky for a company that works in a field that demands precision.

Shankar Krishnamoorthy, general manager of the EDA Group at Synopsys, said, “It’s great to see Intel Foundry hitting these
critical milestones. With 18A now customer-ready, Intel Foundry is bringing together the necessary components needed to
design next-generation AI solutions that our mutual customers require and expect. Synopsys plays a mission-critical role
as an on-ramp to the world’s foundries, and we are proud to work with Intel Foundry to enable Synopsys’ leading EDA
and IP solutions for their leading-edge process.”>>

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...ndry-achieves-major-milestones.html#gs.eyi4tl

It's a canned press release. He'd say exactly the same whether it was going better than expected or a bit worse. That's how these things work.

He makes no comment or recommendation on whether designers should actually use IFS. And nor should he. It's the same when they talk about TSMC, Samsung or anyone else.

Of course, Cadence and Synopsys will have a pretty good read on the current competitive strengths of Intel and TSMC leading edge processes, libraries and IP and how this translates into design PPA and possibly cost. But they're not going to tell you. And certainly not in a press release.

 

[DougDD]

It's a canned press release. He'd say exactly the same whether it was going better than expected or a bit worse. That's how these things work.

He makes no comment or recommendation on whether designers should actually use IFS. And nor should he. It's the same when they talk about TSMC, Samsung or anyone else.

Of course, Cadence and Synopsys will have a pretty good read on the current competitive strengths of Intel and TSMC leading edge processes, libraries and IP and how this translates into design PPA and possibly cost. But they're not going to tell you. And certainly not in a press release.

We can interpret the nuance here - it doesn't make sense to "deepen" a relationship if
you can receive better commercial success elsewhere:

<<26 Feb 2024

Synopsys and Intel Foundry deepen collaboration covering EDA flows and IP portfolio

Synopsys has announced that its AI-driven digital and analogue design flows are certified by Intel Foundry for the Intel 18A process.

..."The era of pervasive intelligence is driving significant silicon proliferation in the semiconductor industry, requiring strong ecosystem
collaboration to help ensure customer success," said Shankar Krishnamoorthy, GM of the Synopsys EDA Group. "The AI-driven certified
flows combined with the development of a broad Synopsys IP portfolio on the Intel 18A process, marks a significant milestone in our
collaboration with Intel to help our mutual customers bring to life innovative devices, whether on the smallest processes or at angstrom scale.">>

https://www.newelectronics.co.uk/co...boration-covering-eda-flows-and-ip-portfolio/

 

[Daniel Nenni]

We can interpret the nuance here - it doesn't make sense to "deepen" a relationship if
you can receive better commercial success elsewhere:

<<26 Feb 2024

Synopsys and Intel Foundry deepen collaboration covering EDA flows and IP portfolio

Synopsys has announced that its AI-driven digital and analogue design flows are certified by Intel Foundry for the Intel 18A process.

..."The era of pervasive intelligence is driving significant silicon proliferation in the semiconductor industry, requiring strong ecosystem
collaboration to help ensure customer success," said Shankar Krishnamoorthy, GM of the Synopsys EDA Group. "The AI-driven certified
flows combined with the development of a broad Synopsys IP portfolio on the Intel 18A process, marks a significant milestone in our
collaboration with Intel to help our mutual customers bring to life innovative devices, whether on the smallest processes or at angstrom scale.">>

https://www.newelectronics.co.uk/co...boration-covering-eda-flows-and-ip-portfolio/

Two things:

Intel is Synopsys' largest EDA customer especially when it comes to emulation.
Intel paid Synopsys a huge amount for IP for both internal and foundry use.

All deep collaborations like this are rooted with deep sums of money.

 

[DougDD]

They are continuing to improve the yield. Ultimately, the success of 18A will be decided by how high the yields are, and how rich its ecosystem (e.g. PDK and tools) are.

I will watch their future announcements as signals regarding 18A health:

1 panther lake production date, the earlier the better.

2 new intel products (such as diamond rapids) announcement using 18A. This would indicate their yield improves to a level such that large Xeon cpus can be manufactured using 18A.

Kevin, I think that it's important to not forget that Panther Lake's schedule
is already reigned in - so that can be viewed as a positive for 18A:

Moor's Law is Dead - Lunar Lake to launch in the first half of 2025:

youtu.be

Well, we're not in 2025 yet and Lunar Lake has already launched.

He also says that Panther Lake is a 2026 project - but that's reigned
into the middle of next year on 18A.

Intel's Panther Lake CPU Generation on Track for Mid-2025 Release, AI Capabilities to See Significant Boost : r/hardware (reddit.com)

Also, in the above link, MLID says that Arrow Lake was a Jim Keller design
and it's analogous to AMD's Zen 1 in terms of future designs.

 

[DougDD]

You are guessing powervia, because tsmc or samsung were not able to do it yet?

Jun 5, 2023 • 9:00 AM EDT

Intel is first to implement backside power in a product-like chip, resulting in over 90% cell utilization and other gains

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- What’s New: Intel is the first in the industry to implement backside power delivery on a
product-like test chip, achieving the performance needed to propel the world into the next era of computing. PowerVia, which will
be introduced on the Intel 20A process node in the first half of 2024, is Intel’s industry-leading backside power delivery solution. It
solves the growing issue of interconnect bottlenecks in area scaling by moving power routing to the backside of a wafer.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230605005191/en/

As we know, Intel dropped 20A to save money and use those learnings to accelerate to 18A.

 

[DougDD]

Two things:

Intel is Synopsys' largest EDA customer especially when it comes to emulation.
Intel paid Synopsys a huge amount for IP for both internal and foundry use.

All deep collaborations like this are rooted with deep sums of money.

Everyone knows that there's a lot of money involved.
There's also a lot of money involved in a prospective
customer on Intel's 18A foundry process wasting their
time and money on testing 18A because Synopsis said
that it's "customer ready", but it's not!

August 6, 2024:

<<Shankar Krishnamoorthy, general manager of the EDA Group at Synopsys,
said, “It’s great to see Intel Foundry hitting these critical milestones. With 18A
now customer-ready,...>>

Intel Foundry Achieves Major Milestones

Intel 18A powered on and healthy, on track for next-gen client and server chip production next year.

www.intel.com

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Kevin, I think that it's important to not forget that Panther Lake's schedule
is already reigned in - so that can be viewed as a positive for 18A:
Moor's Law is Dead - Lunar Lake to launch in the first half of 2025:
youtu.be
Well, we're not in 2025 yet and Lunar Lake has already launched.
He also says that Panther Lake is a 2026 project - but that's reigned
into the middle of next year on 18A.
Intel's Panther Lake CPU Generation on Track for Mid-2025 Release, AI Capabilities to See Significant Boost : r/hardware (reddit.com)
Also, in the above link, MLID says that Arrow Lake was a Jim Keller design
and it's analogous to AMD's Zen 1 in terms of future designs.

Will there be Intel designed full chips made on 18A? Or are these chiplet based products with support die from TSMC?

 

[kevin01]

Will there be Intel designed full chips made on 18A? Or are these chiplet based products with support die from TSMC?

I suspect not. Intel seems to be all-in with the chiplets approach, part of "smart capital".

Nowadays, full chips manufacturing only work well for smaller chips like those used in smart phones.

 

[siliconbruh999]

Intel uses TSMC even though they are a competitor, because it helps intel. Apple uses Samsung for memory and used to use them for foundry.

Apple uses samsung for display as well but I don't think Apple will use samsung foundry after the debacle samsung did with apple

If it helps the company, they will use IFS. IMO the issue is Intel execution, not people not wanting to use IFS. People will use IFS if they can execute and help the company. As Zinsner mentioned, they will be a backup for a while

100% agree not a single company wants to put their eggs in a single basket sometimes there are exception

 

[siliconbruh999]

Will there be Intel designed full chips made on 18A? Or are these chiplet based products with support die from TSMC?

Nope Panther lake is mix of Intel 18A For CPU+NPU+Media engines it basically replace SOC+CPU part of Meteor lake to a single die than we have the GPU part which is dual sourced between Intel 3 (lower tier SKU) and N3E and finally N6 IO die

Clearwater Forest is Mix of Intel 3 for sram and io and Intel 7 for the Additional accelerator and PCIe connectivity

 

[hist78]

Jun 5, 2023 • 9:00 AM EDT

Intel is first to implement backside power in a product-like chip, resulting in over 90% cell utilization and other gains

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- What’s New: Intel is the first in the industry to implement backside power delivery on a
product-like test chip, achieving the performance needed to propel the world into the next era of computing. PowerVia, which will
be introduced on the Intel 20A process node in the first half of 2024, is Intel’s industry-leading backside power delivery solution. It
solves the growing issue of interconnect bottlenecks in area scaling by moving power routing to the backside of a wafer.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230605005191/en/

As we know, Intel dropped 20A to save money and use those learnings to accelerate to 18A.

The press release you mentioned was published in June 2023. It announced that Intel's first chips with Backside Power (PowerVia) will be introduced in the first half of 2024 using 20A.

Then, on September 4, 2024, Intel mentioned that 20A is no longer needed in an opinion article posted on the Intel Newsroom website:

'One of the benefits of our early success with Intel 18A is that it allows us to shift engineering resources away from Intel 20A earlier than expected, as we near the completion of our five-nodes-in-four-years plan. With this decision, the Arrow Lake processor family will be built primarily using external partners and packaged by Intel Foundry.'

In my opinion, Intel effectively canceled 20A with a casual mention buried inside an otherwise exciting 18A announcement. Using Intel's communication style, it's clear that both Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake (set for release around October–November) will be primarily made by unnamed external partners—primarily because these partners prefer to remain anonymous.

We all know it takes considerable time to design a chip for a specific foundry, and there’s also a long lead time to secure production schedules and capacity for a large order. Intel likely changed course not long after their June 2023 news release.

A great foundry can’t afford such communication and credibility issues. Without trust, there’s no business.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

I suspect not. Intel seems to be all-in with the chiplets approach, part of "smart capital".

Nowadays, full chips manufacturing only work well for smaller chips like those used in smart phones.

I think laptops/tablets are full chip CPU and GPUs? Not SoCs put scaled down full chips versus chiplets.

 

[kevin01]

The press release you mentioned was published in June 2023. It announced that Intel's first chips with Backside Power (PowerVia) will be introduced in the first half of 2024 using 20A.

Then, on September 4, 2024, Intel mentioned that 20A is no longer needed in an opinion article posted on the Intel Newsroom website:

'One of the benefits of our early success with Intel 18A is that it allows us to shift engineering resources away from Intel 20A earlier than expected, as we near the completion of our five-nodes-in-four-years plan. With this decision, the Arrow Lake processor family will be built primarily using external partners and packaged by Intel Foundry.'

In my opinion, Intel effectively canceled 20A with a casual mention buried inside an otherwise exciting 18A announcement. Using Intel's communication style, it's clear that both Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake (set for release around October–November) will be primarily made by unnamed external partners—primarily because these partners prefer to remain anonymous.

We all know it takes considerable time to design a chip for a specific foundry, and there’s also a long lead time to secure production schedules and capacity for a large order. Intel likely changed course not long after their June 2023 news release.

A great foundry can’t afford such communication and credibility issues. Without trust, there’s no business.

I suspect LNL and ARL primarily in N3 was a decision made much earlier than Jun 2023. It was claimed by various sources that Bob Swan pre-purhcased TSMC capacity.

They did intend to build low sku of ARL in 20A, but changed their mind to save money. They even stopped free employee coffee to save money, which honestly did not save much money, so I can totoally understand why they stopped 20A here, even though it wad a bad look.

I don't think there is any credibility issue here, as 20A was never communicated for external uses.