Intel announced that it has completed development of its 20A and 18A chip manufacturing processes. The first chips to be manufactured at the first of these new nodes (the 20A node) are expected to be produced in the first half of next year.

At least, that's what Intel claims; we are only a few months away from 2023, but CPUs made on Intel 4, the node before Intel 20A, have yet to appear. However, according to UDN (opens in new tab) (via Tom's Hardware (opens in new tab)), Wang Rui, president of Intel China, said the company has determined all 20A and 18A specifications and performance targets.

Highlights of the 20A include gate-all-around transistors and backside power delivery, both of which are major advancements that should help reduce transistor size and help curb power consumption. 18A builds on these improvements. and is reportedly going so well that Intel has rescheduled it from 2025 to late 2024.

If Intel can pull this off, it will be back in the game, fully competing with TSMC in chip manufacturing technology. In fact, Intel believes that by the second half of next year, 18A will overtake TSMC as the most advanced node in the world.

That's an impressive achievement. It's also a bit confusing when you consider that Intel has yet to sell a single chip using the Intel 4 node.

Furthermore, the Intel 4 chip is not expected to appear until late 2023. This means that Intel will be rolling out three or more nodes within a year. In other words, Intel 4 in the second half of this year, 20A in the first half of next year, and 18A in the second half of 2024.

Some of the terminology used by Intel, however, raises unrealistic expectations. According to Intel, the 20A will be "production ready" in the first half of next year, while the 18A will achieve the same status later this year.

The problem is that in mid-2021 (open in new tab) Intel indicated that the Intel 4 node would achieve that status in late 2022.

If the Intel 4 Meteor Lake CPUs were to appear before the end of the year, there would be an 18-month time lag between the node becoming "production ready" and the chips actually hitting the market.

Applying this to 20A and 18A, chips based on the former could appear by the end of 2025, and 18A CPUs in 2026; given Intel's current situation of selling CPUs based on Intel 7 technology a full two nodes behind 20A, this seems a more realistic This seems like a more realistic schedule.

Time will tell.