18A

Intel is facing one of the most difficult stages Of all its history. And its story is not exactly brief. In fact, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce founded this company more than half a century ago, in 1968. As we have explained in other articles, The future of factories and Intel chips packaging and validation centers is uncertain. However, it is possible that these facilities are finally incorporated into a joint company Managed by Intel, TSMCand, perhaps, by some other company of the integrated circuit industry. Anyway, the short -term competitiveness of this company is closely linked to the success of a single semiconductor manufacturing technology: 18A photolithography. Ben Sell, Vice President of Intel Technology Development, confirmed At the end of last September that the 18A node already has the maturity necessary to enter large -scale production in 2025. and also assured that it will benefit from the resources that have been reallocated since the 20A node. In the current scenario the 18A node will be the true protagonist. That is not the slightest doubt. More transistors. More performance. And less consumption This statement by Joseph Bonetti, main manager of Intel engineering programs, expresses very well The important thing that is the 18A node for this company: “Intel leaders, Board of Directors of Intel and Donald Trump administration, please do not sell or give the control of Intel Foundry to TSMC just when Intel is taking the technological front and starting to take off. It would be a terrible and demoralizing error.” Bonetti also maintains that Intel is not lagging for its competitors, and that the advances that their engineers are achieving in the field of chips production are very important. Bonetti does not expressly mention the 18A integration technology, but his statement is supported by it because right now is the asset that Intel has to compete with TSMC and Samsung in the market for the production of integrated circuits in a year in which 2 Nm photolithographies They will take off yes or yes. In the last months Intel has been revealing some of the characteristics of this integration technology, but just a few hours ago and as a prelude to the semiconductor conference ‘2025 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circu has made public more interesting data. Powervia proposes to physically separate the feed lines and signal signal within each integrated circuit Lithography 18a is erected above all about two essential innovations: Ribbonfet Gate-Lall-Around (GAA) transistors and energy delivery technology Powervia. The purpose of this last improvement is to solve the limitations imposed by the introduction in the integrated circuit of smaller transistors, which are also together more. This scenario causes that within each chip the power lines and signal compete for the same resources, which triggers the appearance of bottlenecks that perceptibly limit the performance and energy efficiency of a CPU. The purpose of Powervia technology is precisely to solve this problem. And to achieve this, what proposes is to physically separate the power lines and signal signal. So far both lived in the same physical space, but From Intel 20A lithographythat It was commercially dismissed In September 2024, the distribution of transistors and food and signal will acquire the form of a sandwich. In this way the transistors will be housed in the center, while the feed lines will reside in a lower layer and those of signal in an upper layer. In any case, for us, the users, the most interesting thing is to know that Intel promises that their lithography 18a will deliver a 25% higher performance using the same voltage as the integration technology Intel 3, as well as a 36% lower energy consumption by using the same frequency and the same voltage. And by reducing this last parameter and moving from 1.1 volts to 0.75 volts, lithography 18a delivers a performance of 18% higher and a consumption of 38% lower. It sounds good, but we should not ignore that This information comes from Intel itself. Whether it is evident that we are interested in consumers that both Intel and TSMC or Samsung have the best state possible. Image | Intel More information | Intel In Xataka | Intel has confirmed that the 20A node will be skipped to reduce expenses. The 18A node will enter production in 2025