Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Recently, Intel announced its third-quarter 2022 results. In the financial report, Intel officially disclosed the latest progress of its manufacturing process.

Intel 4: mass production is under way; expected to flow with the production process of Meteor Lake processors in the fourth quarter

Intel 3: still moving forward as planned; Intel 3 and Intel 4 are the first process nodes to adopt EUV EUV lithography technology, which will achieve significant improvements in transistor performance per watt and computing density

Intel 20A and 18A: the first internal test chips have been rolled out; internal test chips are being produced in a wafer fab for a major potential contract customer

For those who are familiar with the semiconductor industry, you may know that the Intel 20A process is roughly at the level of 2nm in the industry. While Samsung and TSMC, the other two advanced chip manufacturers in the industry, are still focusing on the 3nm process, and there is no obvious progress in the 2nm process. For example, Samsung has only announced some technical plans for 2nm, and TSMC's 3nm process has even been postponed or postponed. At this time, Intel announced that the first batch of Intel 20A internal test chips have been lost, which will undoubtedly have a certain impact on the other two companies, so can Intel return to the dominant position of chip manufacturing by "Intel 20A" process?

Intel 20A process although Intel 20A process is roughly at the level of 2nm in the industry, there is still a big gap between different manufacturers even if it is the same technology node (for example, 2nm process) in the industry. Moreover, there is a big gap between Intel's process characteristics and the other two, so it is not accurate to directly understand "Intel 20A" as 2nm process.

At present, there is no obvious progress in the 2nm process of the other two companies, but we can still make a rough calculation with the data such as the process roadmap.

In terms of transistor density:

Samsung 2GAE (2nm) < Intel 20A < TSMC N2 (2nm) < Intel 18A

Performance:

Samsung 2GAE (2nm) < TSMC N2 (2nm) < Intel 20A < Intel 18A

For PPA:

Samsung 2GAE (2nm) < TSMC N2 (2nm) < Intel 20A < Intel 18A

Note: PPA is the abbreviation of Performance (performance), Power (power consumption) and Area (size). It is an evaluation of the comprehensive performance of the chip manufacturing process.

Whether the Intel 20A is "Wang Fang" depends on the release time of the "Intel 20A" process has begun internal testing of streaming, but there is still a distance from full production. Therefore, whether Intel 20A can become a "king fried" depends on the mass production time of Intel 20A on the one hand and the mass production time of SMC and Samsung 2nm technology on the other.

At present, however, Intel seems to be progressing smoothly, so we assume that Intel 20A will be released as scheduled, and analyze it based on this assumption.

According to current news, the Intel 20A process is expected to produce in 2024, while TSMC and Samsung's 2nm process is expected to produce in 2025. So in 2024, the main competitors of Intel 20A are Samsung 3GAP and TSMC N3E or N3P. If this is the case, the Intel 20A process is almost completely superior to the other two 3nm processes.

In terms of transistor density:

Samsung 3GAP (3nm) < TSMC N3E (3nm) = TSMC N3P (3nm) < Intel 20A

Performance:

Samsung 3GAP (3nm) < TSMC N3E (3nm) < TSMC N3P (3nm) < Intel 20A

For PPA:

Samsung 3GAP (3nm) < TSMC N3E (3nm) < TSMC N3P (3nm) < Intel 20A

Conclusion 1. If the 2nm processes of Intel, Samsung and TSMC are released as scheduled, then Intel 20A will be "Wang Fang", and Intel's process will remain "number one in the world" for a period of time.

2. Although Intel Intel 20A is only an "internal test chip", it has made faster progress compared with the other two 2nm processes.

3. At the 2nm technology node, both TSMC and Intel are using new transistor structures for the first time (Intel is RibbonFET and TSMC is NanoSheet), so in theory there will be a great improvement compared with the previous generation process.

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