In February, the business will finally reveal what comes after its “Five Nodes in Four Years” plan.
As soon as Pat Gelsinger was reinstated as CEO of Intel in 2021, he made the announcement that the corporation will immediately begin implementing a daring plan in order to reclaim its former glory in the semiconductor industry. Integrated device manufacturing (IDM) 2.0 is the name given to this new technique, which was given the acronym IDM. A process technology strategy that required the corporation to swiftly move from node to node in order to overtake competitors such as TSMC was the most ambitious aspect of this multi-pronged attack. It was given the name “five nodes in four years,” and it was the most ambitious part of the attack. That plan will come to an end in 2025 with the company’s 18A (1.8nm) technology, and the business has now said that it will finally show us what happens after that.
Since February of 2021, when Gelsinger brought himself back to the helm of Intel, and March of that same year, when the IDM 2.0 strategy was revealed, it has been almost four years since we have been looking at the same roadmap. An event that was going to be called IFS Direct Connect was announced by the corporation in the month of February. IFS is the company’s foundry services division. According to the homepage page for the event, which was noticed by Tom’s Hardware, the event would purportedly provide light on the next evolution for the development of the company’s semiconductor technologies. Intel will be presenting its market leadership, innovative processes, partner ecosystem, and other related topics at the event, which is apparently aimed to entice fabless companies to have Intel create their future products.
The mere fact that Intel has updated their roadmap is noteworthy in and of itself since it provides us with a view into the future. For the simple reason that upgrades are so uncommon, however, it is also noteworthy. In any case, the current version of its roadmap has been in existence since 2021, and we anticipate that the revised version will at the very least stretch beyond the year 2030. We say this because TSMC just updated its roadmap a week ago, likewise pushing it forward to the year 2030, and we believe that Intel would like to match that effort. According to the most recent version of TSMC’s roadmap, the company will go from 2nm transistors in 2025 to 1.4nm transistors in 2027 and will finally move to 1nm transistors by the year 2030.
As a matter of coincidence, the CEO of Intel, Pat Gelsinger, has already indicated that the company has identical goals to those of TSMC. He stated that the company anticipates being able to squeeze one trillion transistors onto a package by the year 2030. With that being said, let’s assume that Intel is able to achieve its volume production goal of 20A (2nm) in 2024 and 18A (1.8nm) in 2025. It is anticipated that TSMC will continue to operate at a 3nm process through the year 2025; hence, if this scenario occurs, it will potentially have leapfrogged past TSMC and retaken the throne in the semiconductor numbers game. We will have to wait and see if Intel is able to meet those targets, as is often the case with Intel. However, the company did release Meteor Lake in 2023 as promised, so it appears that it is doing everything in its power to rid itself of its reputation for being extremely slow.
The occasion will take place on February 21 and will be attended by the highest-ranking executives of the organization. Additionally, 2024 will be a pivotal year for the company since it is anticipated that it will progress through two additional nodes, which include Intel 3 for its data center products and Intel 20A for its desktop processors. This will be a year that will determine the company’s success or failure. In the first quarter, it is anticipated that the Intel 3 products will be released, while the Intel 20A products are most likely to be released later in the year.