Friday, August 15th 2025
Intel Showcases Reference Arm-based SoC Manufactured on 18A Node
Intel Foundry has been releasing content on its products and services, and today, an interesting update came across. Intel showed a reference "Deer Creek Falls" SoC of what they call a "non-x86" design, manufactured on the 18A node. However, the design is actually Arm-based SoC. Consisting of seven cores, the reference SoC packs a single performance core, two efficiency cores, and four low-power efficiency cores, alongside the embedded PCIe and memory controller IPs and PHYs from ecosystem partners. While this may not be an impressive design, it demonstrates that a heterogeneous design of hybrid cores and IPs from ecosystem partners exists, and it's likely that we will see some designs emerging from this.
While Intel didn't explicitly mention that this SoC is Arm, later in the video, in the section on performance tuning, there are mentions of AArch64, which is Arm's designation for the 64-bit Arm ISA flavor. Alongside the design, Intel also demonstrated that the company offers a suite of performance optimization tools, even for Arm-based processors, allowing its customers to optimize and enhance software performance on their preferred platform, not just the x86 ISA. Hopefully, external foundry customers are slowly becoming aware of Intel Foundry's capabilities, and the scale can commence, especially now that Intel is under supervision from the U.S. government.
14:10 UTC: Update: Intel has delisted the video from its YouTube channel, but our screenshots remain.
While the 18A node showed little interest for external customers, Intel plans to use it extensively across its product lines. For 14A, Intel has evaluated switching its approach and evaluating if customers want to utilize it first, then build more 14A capacity. However, that plan is likely scrapped, and Intel will continue leading-edge node development unconditionally. There are already reports of companies like Apple and NVIDIA evaluating Intel's 14A node, so the Foundry could finally catch some momentum. As the U.S. government also showed interest, we can expect to see many more designs going through the gates of Intel Foundry in the coming quarters.
While Intel didn't explicitly mention that this SoC is Arm, later in the video, in the section on performance tuning, there are mentions of AArch64, which is Arm's designation for the 64-bit Arm ISA flavor. Alongside the design, Intel also demonstrated that the company offers a suite of performance optimization tools, even for Arm-based processors, allowing its customers to optimize and enhance software performance on their preferred platform, not just the x86 ISA. Hopefully, external foundry customers are slowly becoming aware of Intel Foundry's capabilities, and the scale can commence, especially now that Intel is under supervision from the U.S. government.
14:10 UTC: Update: Intel has delisted the video from its YouTube channel, but our screenshots remain.
26 Comments on Intel Showcases Reference Arm-based SoC Manufactured on 18A Node
But we all know your new nodes are one big clusterbeep and you're just postponing the inevitable here.
Nvidia next ?
This really looks nuts and even the physical size of the IC is really weird.
Now this piece of news hints to the exact opposite.
I know they must keep the investors happy but all these weird changes of mind smell really bad.
About yields, ask Reuters who think an entire architecture lineup is being launched with 10% yields (or not being launched at all contrary to Intel claims).
So Intel can produce a simple, small, working ARM chip on 18A? [insert: slow clap]
This tells us nothing.
Even showing a prototype 18A based Nova Lake running stable would not tell us much, because ultimately the yields have been the bane of Intel's in-house nodes.
2xZen 5 are 141,2mm².
SnapDragon X1E is 169,6mm²
Apple M series chips are in the 150-170mm² range too.
At least if were comparing laptop/mini-PC chips.
ARM based smartphone chips are obviously smaller at around or below 100mm², but that's not a proportional comparison as the form factor is completely different.
I would say it's pretty average for a laptop class ARM chip.
These are a few years old, but where typical phone chips at the time.
Whatever Intel made, is clearly bigger than these.
The second picture suggests four energy efficient cores, one high performance core, two PCIe controllers and four memory controllers, plus something I can't quite read, but it seems to be two performance cores maybe? So no graphics, no modem, no WiFi/Bluetooth, no DSP, plus a bunch of other things the chips below have, which explains the graphics card and USB host controller card in the third picture.
Seriously, there is something very weird about the proportions of this die for what it supposed to be. Makes you wonder if the picture has anything to do with this news story.
Probably only made a limited run of the chip
With that said, both of these pack way more stuff than what Intel is presenting, so a bigger size is a given.
www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1614/intel-foundry-and-arm-announce-multigeneration