14nm forever! Oh wait, is that changing too?
A few months ago, Intel announced its very own foundry factory called “Intel Foundry Services”. The company has invested over $20 billion to open new factories so the company could manufacture their own chipsets. It seems like they have found their first customer.
Currently, Samsung and TSMC are the major manufacturers for Qualcomm, now the company is seeking a newer partner to build chipsets for them,
Above is Intel’s roadmap for its upcoming chipsets, including a new naming scheme starting from the 12th generation Alder Lake chipsets which is set to be released this year. This new roadmap reveals that Intel will remove the nanometer node-based naming scheme in favour of simply numbers. Intel 7 is reportedly based on a homegrown 10nm process and promises a 10-15% performance boost. This chipset is also already in-production.
Qualcomm and Intel have struck a deal. Intel is set to manufacture chipsets for Qualcomm using Intel’s latest 20A process which should be released in 2024.
This new 20A process introduces a new transistor architecture called “RibbonFET”. The first time they’ve introduced a new architecture since 2011. This new foundry service is part of CEO of Intel Pat Gelsinger’s “IDM 2.0” strategy. This also signals Intel’s change of business strategies by focusing on the manufacturing of chipsets to partner designers. By 2025, Intel expects to be in the lead in the foundry business, ahead of their rivals TSMC and Samsung.
It’s not just Qualcomm that’s interested in this Foundry, Amazon will also be another partner for Intel. Intel used to be the leading manufacturer of computer chipsets, but has recently lost that position to its rivals.
Source: GSMArena, Reuters, The Verge
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