Intel CEO Says He's Betting the Entire Company's Future on its 18A Process

Intel's upcoming 18A process, short for 18 Angstroms, is the pinnacle of the company's "five nodes in four years" strategy outlined in 2021. It will be the culmination of many years of engineering work by Intel and billions of dollars of R&D. It is theoretically the process node that will allow Intel to leapfrog rivals TSMC and Samsung in the nanometer arms race. Intel's CEO is being extremely blunt about this node's importance to the company's future, stating that he has bet the entire company on 18A's success.

The comments by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger were delivered in a recent interview (flagged by PC Gamer) with Dr. Ian Cutress, formerly of Anandtech. He asked Gelsinger if the old statement that Intel bets the whole company on the next process node was still true today. In a deadpan tone, Gelsinger responded immediately that he had indeed bet the entire company on Intel 18A, causing a bit of an awkward pause as it seemed like Cutress couldn't tell if he was joking. Still, it seemed pretty clear he was dead serious.

Gelsinger then seemingly tried to soften that stance by enumerating all the company's process nodes in the pipeline, some of which will exist alongside 18A. Those include Intel 3, which is for server CPUs only, and variants of 18A. He notes the company will also produce more mature nodes simultaneously with Tower and UMC. The company will also offer advanced packaging to its foundry customers, which was the goal of its newly opened facility in New Mexico. In other words, though a lot will rest on 18A's virtual shoulders, it'll still have many other sources of revenue as well.

Despite the somewhat risky nature of Gelsinger's comments, Intel 18A has already captured a lot of industry interest despite not being ready to launch for another year. In April last year, the company announced a deal with Arm to fabricate custom SoCs on 18A. This month, the company also announced a potential multi-billion dollar deal with Microsoft to make custom chips using 18A, which probably made the folks at TSMC raise an eyebrow or two. Despite those recent wins by Intel, TSMC has previously stated it's not concerned by 18A and is confident its current 3nm process will be superior despite the disparity in nanometer rating.

The interview with Gelsinger is an interesting watch if you have 20 minutes to spare. However, if you're short on time or attention, you can also read the transcript on his Substack here.