TSMC has dealt Intel a major blow by claiming that its current 3nm chip manufacturing technology is comparable to Intel's planned 2025 18A process.

TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said during a recent earnings call with investors (via Tom's Hardware), "Our internal assessment showed that our N3P technology has a PPA comparable to our competitor's technology, 18A."

To decipher this, "PPA" stands for Power Performance Area, a three-key measure of how much power a chip uses, how well it performs, and how small TSMC can make it. N3P, on the other hand, is one of TSMC's current 3nm-class manufacturing nodes. Apple already sells iPhones with chips based on another 3nm-class TSMC node known as N3B. The "18A," on the other hand, is Intel's next-but-two node scheduled for 2025.

Intel currently sells CPUs based on the Intel 7 node, including the latest Raptor Lake refresh CPU, with the Intel 4 coming soon in the form of the Meteor Lake mobile CPU and the Intel 20A due in 2024. According to Intel, the 18A, an improved version of the 20A, will arrive in 2025, at which point Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger claims that Intel will regain its "unquestioned leadership" in chip manufacturing technology.

Well, not according to TSMC, which believes that existing silicon production is as advanced as what Intel is planning for 2025. What complicates this comparison somewhat is that Intel has some rather exotic plans for the 20A node. In particular, a feature called backside power delivery is said to allow for much higher transistor density.

TSMC does not plan to add backside power delivery until the second-generation 2nm-class node in 2026, about two years after Intel. This must allow Intel to claim that it has truly regained the initiative. From one perspective.

Of course, C.C. Wei also stated in the earnings call that TSMC's 2nm technology will be superior to Intel's 18A even without backside power delivery when it comes out in 2025. In other words, both companies have positioned themselves as clear market leaders.

Overall, the next few years are likely to be a subjective battle over whether TSMC or Intel has the most advanced manufacturing technology. Both companies may end up legitimizing themselves as leaders by any means necessary.

The good news, however, is that both companies seem confident that they will continue to advance their chip manufacturing technologies. That is important.