At a time when Intel is rumored to be laying off employees and experiencing a significant decline in revenue, the company has also abandoned its previously planned Intel 20A node, or at least it will not appear in any desktop processors. Intel announced on September 5th that it no longer plans to use its own "Intel 20A" process nodes in the upcoming Arrow Lake processors for the consumer market, and will shift resources from developing Intel 20A (2nm) to smaller Intel 18A (1.8nm) nodes. The company stated that it is currently using an "external partner" to manufacture all Arrow Lake chip components, and reports speculate that the external partner is likely chip manufacturer TSMC.

Intel's sole manufacturing responsibility for Arrow Lake processors is to package externally manufactured chips into the final processor.

In 2021, Intel CEO Kissinger developed a roadmap detailing how Intel will shift from 14nm nodes to smaller manufacturing processes. The release of Intel 20A was supposed to usher in what Intel calls the 'Emmy era', when we will no longer measure transistor size in nanometers.

But Intel will shift resources from developing Intel 20A to smaller Intel 18A nodes. We can interpret this shift towards Intel 18A as Intel moving towards more exciting future technologies, but considering Intel's long-term roadmap, this is not a good sign.

Given the recent challenges faced by Intel, it is difficult not to consider this a failure. In August of this year, Intel announced a 15% layoff before its earnings conference call. During that conference call, Intel reported a historic decline in revenue, leading investors to sue the company. In addition, according to reports, Intel's manufacturing business is also facing difficulties because the wafers produced by Intel's 18A process failed Broadcom's testing.

Intel pointed out that Intel 18A is a cutting-edge process node of Intel's OEM factory and is expected to be put into production in 2025. The company stated that concentrating resources on Intel 18A would also help optimize engineering investments. Currently, the defect density of Intel 18A has reached D0 (number of defects per square centimeter)<0.40, and from an economic perspective, it is appropriate to make a transition now.

Prior to this node change, Intel first demonstrated Arrow Lake processor wafers manufactured on Intel 20A nodes at the 2023 Innovation Conference, indicating that the development cycle of these chips has been long. At that time, Intel announced that Arrow Lake would be launched in 2024. Afterwards, there were rumors in the industry that Intel 20A nodes would only use a portion of the Arrow Lake series, while the rest would use TSMC nodes.