Intel debuts new technology in last-ditch effort to turn company around
The embattled company needs to show that the Panther Lake processor designs it is making will win back lost market share
[SANTA CLARA] Intel, the embattled chipmaker now backed by the US government, introduced new products and manufacturing technology that are central to its turnaround bid.
On Thursday (Oct 9), the company announced that its Panther Lake processor designs are in full production and will go on sale in laptops early next year. The new chips are made with 18A technology, which Intel says offers advantages none of its competitors can match yet.
The unveiling follows a furious six-month stretch for chief executive officer Tan Lip-Bu. After taking the job in mid-March, he has tried to shake up the company while also seeking outside help.
The US government has become the chipmaker’s biggest investor under an unconventional deal brokered by the White House, and Nvidia and SoftBank Group have acquired multibillion-dollar stakes in the company.
Though the dealmaking has lifted Intel’s stock price, the company still needs to show that new products will win back lost market share and attract customers to its foundry division – a business that makes chips for outside clients.
The Panther Lake design builds on its predecessors’ strengths and eliminates their shortcomings, executives said at a company event in Arizona. The processors will more readily balance a PC’s need to run demanding software, such as artificial intelligence (AI) models, without rapidly draining batteries.
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Intel executives explained the benefits of the company’s latest offerings in presentations hosted near a new factory in Ocotillo in Arizona. Known as Fab 52, the facility is the first to go into mass production with the 18A technique.
The once-dominant chipmaker is suffering through its second year of losses, and analysts do not expect a return to profitability before 2027.
That slump reflects a dramatic drop in revenue, triggered by market-share declines and a failure to capitalise on surging demand for AI chips in data centres. By getting the jump on Intel in AI, Nvidia has become the industry’s dominant player.
Intel is also shouldering the costly burden of trying to update its factories. Fab 52 alone required more steel than the Eiffel Tower to build, and contains machines that cost hundreds of millions of dollars each.
Over three days of presentations at the event, company executives repeatedly asserted that 18A is the most advanced chip production technology developed and deployed in the US. That made-in-America spirit lines up with the push by the Trump administration to bolster domestic manufacturing and reduce reliance on factories in East Asia.
The company can make 18A-equipped factories pay for themselves by producing chips for its own needs, Intel said. But the next phase, a technology called 14A, will require outside customers and a high volume of orders to be cost-effective.
Kevin O’Buckley, general manager of the company’s foundry business, said getting the new 18A chips to market in products that demonstrate better performance for consumers will be the first step in re-establishing the company’s credibility.
“Don’t trust us until we can do that,” said O’Buckley, who is tasked with persuading other companies, including rivals, to use its factories. “We know we have a long way to go to deliver trust for our customers.”
The hope is that impressive new products will show that Intel is once again the best in the industry. Other companies would presumably then place orders so that their products get similar benefits from that manufacturing.
Intel’s push to become a foundry means going up against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the dominant company in that category. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics is a distant second in the foundry market. Intel itself has outsourced some production to TSMC, an acknowledgment of that company’s capabilities.
Though Intel has said it will continue to rely on TSMC, 18A is a bid to return to making its best offerings in-house. The technology contains two new features that the chipmaker says are breakthroughs for the industry.
The first relates to transistors, the microscopic switches that give semiconductors their function. Modern chips cram tens of billions of transistors into a small area. In order to make chips more efficient and use less energy, the ability to switch these transistors on and off becomes critical.
The 18A products will be the first to have transistors made with so-called gate-all-around technology, a technique that allows finer control over this process, Intel said. That will allow for chips with more transistors, and the ability to handle growing amounts of data, that consume less power.
The second big breakthrough pertains to how the chips are powered. In the six-decade history of the semiconductor industry, chips have typically had wires built into the top of the component that provide access to data and power.
The increasing number of transistors in chips means that these connections are ever more tightly packed together. That has become untenable because electricity-bearing lines and snugly arranged data connections have started to interfere with each other.
Chips with 18A will feature an arrangement the industry calls backside power.
The data connections are left on the top while power is routed through the other side. That is meant to free up space and remove interference. Again, the ultimate promise is that chips can have more transistors and be more efficient.
Intel was a pioneer of these kinds of fundamental changes, with the rest of the industry forced to follow it. The Santa Clara, California-based company needs the new inventions to have a similar impact.
The bigger challenge may just be beginning. In order for facilities like Fab 52 to make economic sense, Intel needs to turn its microscopic breakthroughs into hundreds of millions of expensive chips – ones that the computer industry cannot live without. BLOOMBERG
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