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Given that this is from 2022 and it says: > We see RibbonFETs as the best option for higher performance at reasonable power, and we will be introducing them in

Given that this is from 2022 and it says: > We see RibbonFETs as the best option for higher performance at reasonable power, and we will be introducing them in 2024 along with other innovations, such as PowerVia, our version of backside power delivery, with the Intel 20A fabrication process. Did they introduce it in 2024? If not, are they still on the roadmap and for what year?

f_devd 2y ago
Seems they did "introduce" it in 20A this year but implies no commercial use yet, that would be with 18A in 2025[0]. [0]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/opinion/continued-momentum-intel-18a.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/opinion/con...
wtallis 2y ago
Intel 20A got cancelled. The follow-up 18A was planned to be 20A fleshed out with a full PDK complete with transistor libraries covering high density and high performance variants, so that it could be competitive as a foundry option for non-Intel chip designs. Now all of Intel's hopes are riding on 18A next year, without the intermediate proof of a working 20A.
Tuna-Fish 2y ago
20A is supposedly ready for manufacturing, yet: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-announces-cancellation-of-20a-process-node-for-arrow-lake-goes-with-external-nodes-instead-likely-tsmc https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-announ...
adrian_b 2y ago
The Intel 20A has been cancelled about a week ago. It was planned to be used for only one product, the Intel Arrow Lake H CPUs for laptops, to be launched in Q1 2025. Now, all Intel Arrow Lake CPUs, both for desktops and for laptops, will be made by TSMC, like also Lunar Lake. Intel will do only assembly and testing for them. This cancellation has been done so that Intel will be able to use all their resources in developing the better 18A CMOS process. Intel hopes that 18A (with RibbonFETs and backside power delivery) will be their salvation. 18A is intended to be used both for Intel products and for the products of other companies, starting in the middle of 2025 (with Panther Lake for laptops and with Clearwater Forrest and Diamond Rapids for servers). Intel claims that they have working samples of Panther Lake laptop CPUs and Clearwater Forrest server CPUs, made with 18A. According to Intel, the main problem that must be solved with 18A until the middle of 2025 is to improve its fabrication yields, which for now are much worse than for a mature TSMC process, so unless the yields are improved the 18A process would not be competitive in mass production. While Intel must make serious efforts to catch up with TSMC, Samsung does not appear to be much better than Intel, because they have exactly the same problem, with fabrication yields much worse than TSMC for the processes with equivalent density.
- aswanson 2y ago
  What odds would you place on intel succeeding with 18A?
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    While I hate many anonymous Intel employees who are responsible for some very ugly actions of Intel in the past, I am strongly rooting for Intel to succeed to make good enough the 18A CMOS process, because there is a desperate need in the electronics industry for more competition, after the excessive consolidation that has happened during the last 2 decades. Unfortunately, it is completely impossible for an outsider to make any estimate of the likelihood of success of the Intel foundry division. Based on the available public information, it would seem highly probable for Intel to reach their goals. Nevertheless, there is a history of shameless lies included by Intel employees in their presentations about the 10 nm process, which happened during the many years when Intel had failed to transition from the 14 nm process to the 10 nm process (now rebranded Intel 7). Therefore there is an uncertainty about the truthfulness of the information currently published by Intel. Intel has never published a post mortem analysis to explain the reasons for their failure to develop the 10 nm process and especially the reasons for the discrepancies between the reality of the 10 nm process and the false information about it, which apparently was not only presented to the public, but also to the other Intel divisions, and perhaps also to the Intel management. While it is said that Intel failed because they delayed the adoption of deep UV photolithography, that explains a very little part of the 10 nm fiasco. It does not explain the great differences between the a priori estimated performance of the process and its actually achieved performance. Because Intel has not been transparent about the causes of their earlier failures, we cannot know whether those causes have been removed. The current Intel CEO is certainly better than the previous, but there is not enough evidence that he has overcome the organizational inertia of some parts of Intel. During the many years when Intel had no serious competition, they have become accustomed to increase their profits by not implementing every improvement in their products that they could do, but to partition the possible improvements in many small steps and to implement those steps over many years, adding each year just the minimum that could be marketed as something better than the previous generation, in order to minimize their manufacturing costs and maximize their profit. For Intel to become competitive again, they should abandon this policy and jump over the intermediate steps to really better products, even if that appears to reduce their profits, because when their products are not being bought, there will be no profits at all. While AMD will launch next month the Turin server CPUs, which use up-to-date "Zen 5" cores, a couple of months after their introduction in consumer CPUs, Intel will launch next month the Granite Rapids server CPUs, and it has already launched the Sierra Forest server CPUs, both of which use the already obsolete CPU cores that have also been used in Meteor Lake, and which have only minimal differences from the cores of Alder Lake from 2021. Only in late 2025 is Intel expected to launch server CPUs (Clearwater Forest and Diamond Rapids) with cores similar to those of the consumer CPUs (Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake S), which are launched today and one month from now. Intel needs to streamline somehow their design and verification process, so that they will become able to update all their products more or less at once, like AMD, not doing like today, when they launch new products that are already obsolete, hoping that their customers will buy them anyway. While I do not believe that the great decrease in the company valuation of Intel is justified, I think that it was a good thing, because it has forced the Intel management to cancel some intermediate steps, which were distractions from their main goals, because they did not provide great enough advances, like the 20A CMOS process or the Arrow Lake S Refresh CPUs (both planned for 2025 products). Hopefully these cancellations will bring closer the products that were planned after them.

f_devd 2y ago

Seems they did "introduce" it in 20A this year but implies no commercial use yet, that would be with 18A in 2025[0]. [0]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/opinion/continued-momentum-intel-18a.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/opinion/con...

wtallis 2y ago

Intel 20A got cancelled. The follow-up 18A was planned to be 20A fleshed out with a full PDK complete with transistor libraries covering high density and high performance variants, so that it could be competitive as a foundry option for non-Intel chip designs. Now all of Intel's hopes are riding on 18A next year, without the intermediate proof of a working 20A.

Tuna-Fish 2y ago

20A is supposedly ready for manufacturing, yet: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-announces-cancellation-of-20a-process-node-for-arrow-lake-goes-with-external-nodes-instead-likely-tsmc https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-announ...

adrian_b 2y ago

The Intel 20A has been cancelled about a week ago. It was planned to be used for only one product, the Intel Arrow Lake H CPUs for laptops, to be launched in Q1 2025. Now, all Intel Arrow Lake CPUs, both for desktops and for laptops, will be made by TSMC, like also Lunar Lake. Intel will do only assembly and testing for them. This cancellation has been done so that Intel will be able to use all their resources in developing the better 18A CMOS process. Intel hopes that 18A (with RibbonFETs and backside power delivery) will be their salvation. 18A is intended to be used both for Intel products and for the products of other companies, starting in the middle of 2025 (with Panther Lake for laptops and with Clearwater Forrest and Diamond Rapids for servers). Intel claims that they have working samples of Panther Lake laptop CPUs and Clearwater Forrest server CPUs, made with 18A. According to Intel, the main problem that must be solved with 18A until the middle of 2025 is to improve its fabrication yields, which for now are much worse than for a mature TSMC process, so unless the yields are improved the 18A process would not be competitive in mass production. While Intel must make serious efforts to catch up with TSMC, Samsung does not appear to be much better than Intel, because they have exactly the same problem, with fabrication yields much worse than TSMC for the processes with equivalent density.

aswanson 2y ago
What odds would you place on intel succeeding with 18A?
- adrian_b 2y ago
  While I hate many anonymous Intel employees who are responsible for some very ugly actions of Intel in the past, I am strongly rooting for Intel to succeed to make good enough the 18A CMOS process, because there is a desperate need in the electronics industry for more competition, after the excessive consolidation that has happened during the last 2 decades. Unfortunately, it is completely impossible for an outsider to make any estimate of the likelihood of success of the Intel foundry division. Based on the available public information, it would seem highly probable for Intel to reach their goals. Nevertheless, there is a history of shameless lies included by Intel employees in their presentations about the 10 nm process, which happened during the many years when Intel had failed to transition from the 14 nm process to the 10 nm process (now rebranded Intel 7). Therefore there is an uncertainty about the truthfulness of the information currently published by Intel. Intel has never published a post mortem analysis to explain the reasons for their failure to develop the 10 nm process and especially the reasons for the discrepancies between the reality of the 10 nm process and the false information about it, which apparently was not only presented to the public, but also to the other Intel divisions, and perhaps also to the Intel management. While it is said that Intel failed because they delayed the adoption of deep UV photolithography, that explains a very little part of the 10 nm fiasco. It does not explain the great differences between the a priori estimated performance of the process and its actually achieved performance. Because Intel has not been transparent about the causes of their earlier failures, we cannot know whether those causes have been removed. The current Intel CEO is certainly better than the previous, but there is not enough evidence that he has overcome the organizational inertia of some parts of Intel. During the many years when Intel had no serious competition, they have become accustomed to increase their profits by not implementing every improvement in their products that they could do, but to partition the possible improvements in many small steps and to implement those steps over many years, adding each year just the minimum that could be marketed as something better than the previous generation, in order to minimize their manufacturing costs and maximize their profit. For Intel to become competitive again, they should abandon this policy and jump over the intermediate steps to really better products, even if that appears to reduce their profits, because when their products are not being bought, there will be no profits at all. While AMD will launch next month the Turin server CPUs, which use up-to-date "Zen 5" cores, a couple of months after their introduction in consumer CPUs, Intel will launch next month the Granite Rapids server CPUs, and it has already launched the Sierra Forest server CPUs, both of which use the already obsolete CPU cores that have also been used in Meteor Lake, and which have only minimal differences from the cores of Alder Lake from 2021. Only in late 2025 is Intel expected to launch server CPUs (Clearwater Forest and Diamond Rapids) with cores similar to those of the consumer CPUs (Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake S), which are launched today and one month from now. Intel needs to streamline somehow their design and verification process, so that they will become able to update all their products more or less at once, like AMD, not doing like today, when they launch new products that are already obsolete, hoping that their customers will buy them anyway. While I do not believe that the great decrease in the company valuation of Intel is justified, I think that it was a good thing, because it has forced the Intel management to cancel some intermediate steps, which were distractions from their main goals, because they did not provide great enough advances, like the 20A CMOS process or the Arrow Lake S Refresh CPUs (both planned for 2025 products). Hopefully these cancellations will bring closer the products that were planned after them.