Intel has a lot riding on “18A,” its next-generation manufacturing process for silicon chips that the company claims will help it catch up to the lead that competitors like TSMC have built up over the last few years. With 18A, Intel would return to manufacturing its own processor designs in its own factories, including the upcoming Series 3 Core Ultra chips for laptops (codenamed Panther Lake), after manufacturing parts of all other Core Ultra chips with TSMC. Intel is also offering 18A manufacturing capacity to external chipmakers, a major milestone in former CEO Pat Gelsinger’s plan to make Intel a competitive, cutting-edge (and primarily US-based) chip manufacturer for the rest of the industry.
But a Reuters report claims that Intel is struggling to make usable chips on 18A, according to “people who were briefed on the company’s test data since late last year.” As of this summer, these sources say that just 10 percent of the chips being manufactured on 18A are “up to [Intel’s] specifications.”
Intel disputed the numbers cited in the report. “Yields are better than that,” Intel CFO David Zinsner told Reuters, though neither Zinsner nor Intel provided an alternate figure.
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