Intel wants to pull out ahead in the race for smaller chips
Andy Walker / Android Authority
TL; DR
- Intel wants to reduce chip production to just 1.8 nm by 2025.
- 4 nm Meteor Lake processors should ship sometime after the Alder Lake family this fall.
- In the meantime, it is renaming its 10 nm production to “7”.
Hoping to catch up with competitors in the PC space, Intel has announced aggressive plans to downsize chip manufacturing processes to 4, 3 and eventually 1.8 nanometers by 2025.
Intel’s current 10 nm “Enhanced Superfin” production is renamed “7”, although it is actually not a real 7 nm process. Engadget reported. The company has struggled to get 7nm to work, despite the fact that companies like AMD and Samsung offer the technology for shipping products. In practice, Intel chips have remained competitive, but further shrinking is essential to keep up with performance and energy efficiency.
Related: AMD vs. Intel
The company’s Alder Lake processor family will finally be delivered in the fall of 2021 and will mix powerful and highly efficient cores for optimal energy use. At some point beyond that, the 4nm Meteor Lake family will come, based on a “tile” design and stacked chip technology called Foveros. Mobile processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and Apple A14 are already at the 5 nm mark.
The plans for the 3, 2 and 1.8 nm production are even more nebulous. Intel calls the latter two “20A” and “18A” and refers to the angstrom, a unit that measures one ten-billionth of a meter. 18A processors are currently slated to go into production in 2025, but it could take longer for the technology to become commonplace.
Problems with 7nm could potentially anticipate further delays. However, Intel has a strong incentive to make things work as consumers and business customers could easily switch to AMD processors for computers. That would destroy Intel’s core business – the enterprise could not gain a foothold in mobile CPUs or cellular radio chips.
