>Since taking in March, CEO Lip-Bu Tan has moved fast to cut costs and find a new path to revive the ailing U.S. chipmaker. By June, he started voicing that a manufacturing process that prior CEO Pat Gelsinger bet heavily on, known as 18A, was losing its appeal to new customers, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Losing Appeal? Really?
>Tan has tasked the company with teeing up options for discussion with Intel's board when it meets as early as this month, including whether to stop marketing 18A to new clients, one of the two sources said.
So it's the board again?
j_walter•10h ago
Probably losing appeal because, as another article pointed out, the 18A process has been found to be roughly equivalent to TSMC's N3 process, which was in HVM in 2023...not exactly what was promised the last few years (which was better performance than TSMC N2).
What is interesting is TSMC claimed this over a year ago and Intel denied it.
DebtDeflation•5h ago
Watch them cancel 18A and claim it's because 14A is coming along faster and better than planned. Like they did with 20A.
yndoendo•12h ago
I haven't followed Intel for some time, are their high-end chips still being made by TSMC or have they moved back to Intel foundry?
j_walter•10h ago
A majority of the chiplets are made by TSMC, but the main cores had still made by Intel. This has changed somewhat the last few years, but TSMC is still making a lot of chips for Intel. Supposedly the 18A node will be used for the latest gen CPU but it is still likely to use some TSMC chiplets.
ksec•13h ago
Losing Appeal? Really?
>Tan has tasked the company with teeing up options for discussion with Intel's board when it meets as early as this month, including whether to stop marketing 18A to new clients, one of the two sources said.
So it's the board again?
j_walter•10h ago
What is interesting is TSMC claimed this over a year ago and Intel denied it.
DebtDeflation•5h ago