Intel's new chip manufacturing technology is its greatest hope for a turnaround — and its biggest risk

Fri, May 16, 2025, 11:39 AM 5 min read

Intel's (INTC) efforts to reconstruct the spot elephantine to its erstwhile glory whitethorn hinge connected a caller manufacturing process the institution calls 18A.

Short for 18 angstroms — an angstrom is adjacent to 0.1 nanometers — 18A is, according to Wall Street analysts and spot manufacture experts, Intel's past anticipation to instrumentality backmost the semiconductor crown from rival TSMC (TSM).

Available aboriginal this year, 18A takes vantage of 2 manufacturing techniques that TSMC isn't utilizing yet: gate-all-around transistors and backside power. Intel says the technologies volition amended its chips' show and efficiency.

But Intel isn't conscionable utilizing 18A to reclaim its spot arsenic a starring chipmaker. The institution is besides banking connected utilizing the exertion to determination successful connected TSMC's declaration manufacturing concern by gathering 18A-based chips for itself and customized versions for third-party customers.

But that'll beryllium difficult. TSMC already builds chips for companies including AMD, Apple, and Nvidia. Intel opened up its manufacturing concern to extracurricular clients successful 2021 nether erstwhile CEO Pat Gelsinger. But Wall Street analysts and executives grew exasperated with his strategy and what they saw arsenic unrealistic goals for the business, which mislaid $13.4 cardinal successful 2024 contempt signaling a gross of $17.5 billion.

So far, Amazon and Microsoft person signed connected to physique their ain chips utilizing Intel's 18A process, with the anticipation that others volition travel suit. But CFO David Zinsner says third-party commitments are "not significant" yet, according to Reuters.

Intel's 18A is truthful important due to the fact that it's introducing 2 technologies to the company's chips astatine once. First, it's taking vantage of gate-all-around transistors — next-generation transistors that tin much actively power the travel of energy done a chip. It's besides utilizing a method called backside power, which changes wherever and however powerfulness is delivered to a chip's transistors to alteration much ratio and amended performance.

Together, the 2 technologies would assistance amended AI exertion show without moving into vigor constraints, UC Santa Barbara engineering processor Kaustav Banerjee told Yahoo Finance. That would chopped down connected problems similar overheating — something that reportedly plagued Nvidia's Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs) erstwhile they were successful development.

Taking first-mover vantage successful the spot manufacture typically means large wins for a semiconductor manufacturer. Intel's founders invented modern semiconductors, and the chipmaker was the archetypal to successfully manufacture a caller benignant of transistor called Finfet successful 2011.