Tuesday, September 15th 2026
Intel "Panther Lake" Hits 80% Yield on 18A Node
Intel's latest "Panther Lake" SoC, featuring a compute tile built on the company's 18A node, has reportedly achieved an 80% yield. This is great news for Intel Foundry, as the 18A yields have been steadily improving. The "Panther Lake" compute die measures approximately 8.004 x 14.288 mm, resulting in a silicon area of 114.304 mm². With this design, yields are around 80%, indicating not only low defect rates for the node but also a high parametric yield, meaning a significant number of dies have all functioning elements. This suggests that Intel is overcoming its historic parametric yield problems alongside manufacturing challenges.
A testament to this progress might be the recently rumored shift in "Nova Lake" production. Intel plans to produce the majority of "Nova Lake" compute tiles in-house, with about 80-90% being manufactured by Intel Foundry and the remainder by TSMC, as part of a dual-sourcing strategy. For a mature node like 18A, defect rates are now low, around D0=0.1 or D0=0.2. It is likely that Intel has achieved the lower end of this range due to advancements in the node and months of high-volume production with "Panther Lake." Combined with the relatively small compute tile used in this SoC, parametric yields appear to be strong.
Currently, Intel is on track to finish the year with about 40,000 18A wafers manufactured per month and plans to reach 60,000 WPM by the end of 2027. For 2028, the goal is to achieve an 80,000 WPM capacity on 18A alone, alongside the ramp-up of 14A. Analysis from GF Securities analyst Jeff Pu suggests that the 14A node will have a manufacturing capacity of around 6,000 wafers per month by the end of 2027, with a projected increase to 24,000 wafers per month in 2028. This is, of course, before any collaboration with Elon Musk's Terafab project, which is expected to utilize the Intel 14A node.
Source:
Jeff Pu on X
A testament to this progress might be the recently rumored shift in "Nova Lake" production. Intel plans to produce the majority of "Nova Lake" compute tiles in-house, with about 80-90% being manufactured by Intel Foundry and the remainder by TSMC, as part of a dual-sourcing strategy. For a mature node like 18A, defect rates are now low, around D0=0.1 or D0=0.2. It is likely that Intel has achieved the lower end of this range due to advancements in the node and months of high-volume production with "Panther Lake." Combined with the relatively small compute tile used in this SoC, parametric yields appear to be strong.
15 Comments on Intel "Panther Lake" Hits 80% Yield on 18A Node
It's also nice to hear that Intel is finally heading in the right direction with their FAB tech
when i have to trash 80% of metal or solid wood i am not very happy. I would not consider 80% a decent yield rate or a high yield rate.
TSMC starts mass production of a node at 60% and it slowly becomes better as experience grows on the node.
So with intel sitting at 80% with the more complex power infrastructure, intel has a winner for 18a.
I doubt intel is selling those chips for less than they can produce them, what is true is that they are still stuck with a massive amount of debt due to the build out of all those new fabs and the technical mess they were in prior to Pat G
If you have 80% yield, you'd be trashing 20% of the material.I'm still on rocket lake. The new legion Strix halo laptop is very tempting,but I want to see what the 12xe chip can do power/ battery life wise first.
*Apple being the exception. Apple is on crack and cannot be stopped.
Panther Lake laptops are still scarce and quite expensive. Where are all those Panther Lake chips going then?
those take 12 tiles per chip for single socket systems with up to 288 cores