Intel Skips 20A

Should We Be Concerned?

In a surprising move last week, Intel Foundry revealed that it's abandoning 20A, a node essential to its 5N4Y strategy. Ben Sell, VP of Technology Development at Intel, wrote

Since releasing the Intel 18A Process Design Kit (PDK) 1.0 in July, we have seen positive response across our ecosystem and are encouraged by what we’re seeing from Intel 18A in the fab. It’s powered on and booting on operating systems, healthy, and yielding well—and we remain on track for launch in 2025. 

One of the benefits of our early success on Intel 18A is that it enables us to shift engineering resources from Intel 20A earlier than expected as we near completion of our five-nodes-in-four-years plan. With this decision, the Arrow Lake processor family will be built primarily using external partners and packaged by Intel Foundry.

Is this positive spin correct, or is it lipstick on a pig? After all, Ben just announced that Intel is simultaneously abandoning a strategic process node and outsourcing the correspond…