Intel's 18 A yield rate has increased to 85%. It is reported that it has received large orders from many companies such as Nvidia and Open AI
Intel has risen rapidly in the chip foundry field, and technology giants are paying attention to the company's advanced processes to solve the supply dilemma of TSMC's insufficient production capacity. According to reports from KeyBanc and FactSet, Intel's next-generation process technologies, including 18A and 14A, have achieved outstanding success. According to the report, Intel wafer foundry has reached cooperation with companies such as AMD, Nvidia, Marvell, Microsoft, Micron and OpenAI.
Intel has risen rapidly in the chip foundry field, and technology giants are paying attention to the company's advanced processes to solve the supply dilemma of TSMC's insufficient production capacity. According to reports from KeyBanc and FactSet, Intel's next-generation process technologies, including 18A and 14A, have achieved outstanding success. According to the report, Intel wafer foundry has reached cooperation with companies such as AMD, Nvidia, Marvell, Microsoft, Micron and OpenAI. Due to the severe shortage of TSMC's production capacity and its inability to meet the needs of all customers, Intel's process technology has become the ideal choice for many external customers, and the improvement of yield is an important driving force for this decision. The report pointed out that the yield rate of Intel's 18A process has increased from 65% in the previous quarter to 85%, second only to the 90% yield rate of TSMC's N2 (2nm) process, but much higher than the 50-60% yield rate of Samsung's SF2 process. Intel said that as the 18A processor production capacity ramp continues, more Panther Lake (third-generation Core Ultra processors) and Wildcat Lake (third-generation Core entry-level mobile processors) series products will be launched to the market later this year. On the data center front, Intel is expanding Intel 4 and Intel 3 production capacity as artificial intelligence is expected to drive its CPU business to grow 25-30% this year and another 50% in the coming year. TSMC is currently the only semiconductor manufacturer that can provide cutting-edge process and packaging technology, but Intel is becoming a strong competitor. Intel has only launched the 18A process node and has achieved mass production. Its more advanced 18A-P is still in the risk production stage. The 14A process node is expected to be in risk production in 2028 and mass production in 2029. In addition, Intel's advanced packaging EMIB process has also made significant progress. The report pointed out that Intel’s EMIB-T chip yield rate has reached the rumored 98%. Just three months ago, the yield rate of Intel's EMIB chips was only 90%. This also provides a basis for Intel to compete with TSMC, because TSMC's CoWoS packaging technology has already reached a yield rate of 98% to 99%. However, TSMC's production capacity constraints also left a gap for EMIB to break through. It is reported that products using Intel's EMIB packaging technology currently include Nvidia's Feynman GPU, Google's TPU HumuFish and Amazon AWS Trainium 3. These technological advances will undoubtedly provide technology giants with confidence in entrusting Intel to produce chips, while boosting Intel's future performance. KeyBanc raised Intel's target stock price from US$110 to US$155 in the report, emphasizing that the company will benefit from factors such as strong demand for AI servers, significant improvements in process yield, increased customer design bids, and price increases. (