Intel's 18A Node Process Has Entered "Risk Production" - Foundry's Output Scaling Up

[T0@st]

Intel's Vision 2025 conference ended yesterday—since then, media outlets have spent time poring over a multitude of announcements made during the two-day Las Vegas, Nevada event. Notably, Team Blue leadership confirmed that their Core Ultra 300 "Panther Lake" processor series is built to scale (on) 18A, and is on track for production later this year." Prominently-displayed presentation material indicated a roadmapped 2026 launch of "Panther Lake" client chips. The success of this next-gen mobile processor family is intertwined with Intel's Foundry service making marked progress. As summarized by the company's social media account, production teams are celebrating another milestone: "Intel 18A has entered risk production. This final stage is about stress-testing volume manufacturing before scaling up to high volume in the second half of 2025."

Under Pat Gelsinger's command, Team Blue set off on a "five nodes in four years" (5N4Y) adventure around mid-2021. This plan is set to conclude with the finalization of 18A, at some point this year, under a newly refreshed regime—with Lip-Bu Tan recently established as CEO. During an on-stage Intel Vision 2025 session, Kevin O'Buckley—Senior VP of Foundry Services—explained the meaning of: "risk production, while it sounds scary, is actually an industry standard terminology, and the importance of risk production is we've gotten the technology to a point where we're freezing it...Our customers have validated that; 'Yep, 18A is good enough for my product.' And we have to now do the 'risk' part, which is to scale it from making hundreds of units per day to thousands, tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands. So risk production..is scaling our manufacturing up and ensuring that we can meet not just the capabilities of the technology, but the capabilities at scale." By original "5N4Y" decree, top brass demanded that process nodes be (fully) available for production, rather than be stuck in a (not quite there) final high volume manufacturing (HVM) phase.



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[kondamin]

Risk some n series wafers for cheap power sipping desktops and laptops

 

[Clawedge]

That's excellent news. Competition is always welcome as the consumer is the winner in the end

 

[Chaitanya]

Hopefully it will "ease" some pressure on TSMC capacity.

 

[kondamin]

Hopefully it will "ease" some pressure on TSMC capacity.

i highly doubt we would see volume increases and lower prices on consumer goods if they upped their capacity.

just look at memory makers they just scale down production when they aren’t getting what they want

 

[Bwaze]

What will ease the pressure on TSMC capacity are 32% tarrifs on all products from Taiwan.


It's hilarious how this unprecedented development isn't even a news on tech sites, because they're so worried the comments will turn political.

 

[kondamin]

What will ease the pressure on TSMC capacity are 32% tarrifs on all products from Taiwan.


It's hilarious how this unprecedented development isn't even a news on tech sites, because they're so worried the comments will turn political.

nah thats just going to hurt consumer goods, it’s going to explode in the admins faces way before corporate can do something about their ai expenditures which is filling all the capacity At tsmc.

Pretty damn certain they will roll back those tariffs when they notice the consequences

 

[bgx]

nah thats just going to hurt consumer goods, it’s going to explode in the admins faces way before corporate can do something about their ai expenditures which is filling all the capacity At tsmc.

Pretty damn certain they will roll back those tariffs when they notice the consequences

I thought semi conductors are excluded from the tarrifs.

 

[kondamin]

I thought semi conductors are excluded from the tarrifs.

Just thinking in general, i no longer keep up or dig deep in stuff that gets me angry and depressed.
so it’s very possible the bffs are being spared the pain

 

[Bwaze]

What does the exemption of semiconductors even mean - there will be no tariff on CPUs and other electronic individual parts, but still tariffs on computers, graphics cards, other components? Or are these all covered?

 

[Panther_Seraphin]

What does the exemption of semiconductors even mean - there will be no tariff on CPUs and other electronic individual parts, but still tariffs on computers, graphics cards, other components? Or are these all covered?

All depends on wording but I would suspect it would only be the silicon parts that would be exempt but full builds/cards etc would be covered by the tarriffs (I havent looked into the wording at all so I could very well be wrong)

Trump is pushing for things that are sold in the US to be built in the US so my suspicion would be it would be fine to get the silicon from Taiwan but final production/integration should be done in the US