“To achieve this, Gelsinger told the conference that Intel is on track with its manufacturing roadmap of 5 nodes in four years, regaining process leadership in 2025 with the 18A node, as reported by Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin. Gelsinger added that following on from Meteor Lake (expected to be launched later this month), Intel will be ramping its Intel 3 process (5 nm) “soon”. Perhaps more excitingly – and tantalizingly – Gelsinger said that Intel has received a large customer pre-payment for its 18A node (1.8 nm) that has already been successfully taped out and is on track for 2025.
One can only speculate as to which company this “large customer” is. TSMC also claims it is on track for its own 2 nm process node in 2025 and already enjoys the patronage of major customers including Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, MediaTek along with Apple. Undoubtedly, Intel will be keen to secure at least one of these companies as it helps with its own economies of scale as investing in each of these new process nodes is a multi-billion-dollar endeavor. In the end, the competition in the foundry sector is great for customers as it is driving the delivery of faster, but also more efficient chips.”