In a surprise announcement, Intel has revealed that it won’t be making most of the silicon for its new range of desktop gaming CPUs itself. Instead, the forthcoming Intel Arrow Lake lineup will be manufactured by third parties, such as TSMC and Samsung, with Intel Foundry only stepping in at the packaging stage. This is a huge U-turn from the company, which has previously produced its desktop x86 CPUs in house.
The statement comes as Intel attempts to turn around its fortunes after disappointing financial results in the last quarter. Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs are expected to be released by the end of 2024, when they’re likely to go head-to-head with AMD’s new Ryzen 9000X3D chips in the battle to make the best gaming CPU.
The new Intel Arrow Lake desktop CPU lineup was originally expected to be built in-house using Intel’s 2nm chip-making process, called 20A, but Intel says it’s now going to “shift engineering resources from Intel 20A earlier than expected,” and instead focus on the new Intel 18A process. Intel says it’s had some “early success” already with 18A, saying that the process is “booting on operating systems,” and that it’s “healthy and yielding well,” adding that “we remain on track for launch in 2025.”
Intel is spinning this all as positive progress, describing the move away from focusing on 20A as “one of the benefits of our early success on Intel 18A.” However, 18A was already scheduled to be launched in 2025, and there’s also no disguising the fact that Intel not producing the silicon for its next range of flagship desktop CPUs is a big change for the company.
Moreover, some of Intel Foundry’s customers are reportedly less enamored with the progress of Intel’s 18A process as the company is making out. Several tests of the process with chip maker Broadcom, for example, have failed, according to this recent report from Reuters. “After its engineers and executives studied the results,” says the report, “the company [Broadcom] concluded the manufacturing process is not yet viable to move to high-volume production.”
We’ve already had our first taster of Intel’s latest CPU architecture, as the company revealed all the details of its forthcoming Core Ultra 200V lineup at the IFA tech tradeshow. Check out our Intel Lunar Lake guide for more details on Intel’s new chip for thin-and-light gaming laptops, as well as handhelds.
