X86 giant says it’s on track to regaining manufacturing leadership after years of missteps
By now, you likely know the story: Intel made major manufacturing missteps over the past several years, giving rivals like AMD a major advantage, and now the x86 giant is in the midst of an ambitious five-year plan to regain its chip-making mojo. This week, Intel is expected to detail just how it’s going to make chips in the near future that are faster, less costly and more reliable from a manufacturing standpoint at the 2022 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits, which begins on Monday. The Register and other media outlets were given a sneak peek in a briefing last week. The details surround Intel 4, the manufacturing node previously known as the chipmaker’s 7nm process. Intel plans to use the node for products entering the market next year, which includes the compute tiles for the Meteor Lake CPUs for PCs and the Granite Rapids server chips. Intel has previously promised that Intel 4 will deliver a 20 percent improvement in performance-per-watt over Intel 7, the node previously known as the company’s 10nm Enhanced SuperFin that powers Alder Lake client CPUs and the recently delayed Sapphire Rapids server chips. In the briefing, Ben Sell, the executive in charge of Intel 4 development, said the node is progressing well and that his team has been able to achieve a roughly 21.5 percent in performance improvement for Intel 4 over Intel 7 at the same power. Conversely, Intel 4 can provide the same frequency level as Intel 7 using 40 percent less power. This means that future chips like Meteor Lake will not only have better performance, which we always hope for with new chips, but also better efficiency.
