On the 20th (local time), Intel announced at the annual VLSI Symposium that it is regaining its process leadership by offering cutting-edge foundry nodes with Intel 3 technology.
The Intel Corporation stated, “Intel Foundry is doing its best to enable customers to exert greater capabilities for developing new applications by inheriting Moore’s Law using innovative technology,” and emphasized, “Intel has led the industry through transistor technology at major turning points for decades, such as implementing transistors in 3D with strained silicon in 2005, High-K metal gate in 2009, and FinFET architecture in 2011. It is currently leading continuous transistor innovation to support the future such as AI and supercomputers.”
Intel also revealed details about the Intel 3 process node, a cutting-edge node based on FinFET.
The basic Intel 3 process node provides up to 18% better performance at the same power across the entire processor core and offers a flexible set of metal interconnect options with up to 10% higher integration than the previous generation Intel 4 node. This performance improvement has been made throughout a single generation, achieving remarkable progress in just one year. This was achieved through meticulous optimization in the entire process, from transistors to metal stacks. This integration improvement was made possible by Intel’s new high-density standard cell library.
In 2021, Intel set a goal to achieve 5 nodes in 4 years (5N4Y) as a bold milestone to recover its process technology leadership. The 5N4Y roadmap focuses on recovering technical leadership and demonstrating consistent execution through careful and systematic risk management. It also aims to innovate the company to provide a wide range of design, packaging, and manufacturing capabilities to foundry customers, thereby advancing the entire industry.
As a result, Intel Corporation explained that the Intel 3 technology provides a cutting-edge FinFET process node series and offers 10% higher integration and advanced generation performance compared to the Intel 4 node. The Intel 3 node reached manufacturing readiness in the 4th quarter of last year and is currently under mass production for the Intel Corporation Xeon 6 processor lineup. Intel added that it is consistently fulfilling its commitment to the 5N4Y plan and is preparing the foundation for the Intel Corporation 20A and Intel Corporation 18A process nodes, along with the transition into the RibbonFET and Angstrom era.
