Intel Confirms They Are “All-In” On 14A, Talks Custom Xeon x86 CPU For NVIDIA, RTX GPU Tile For High-Performance Notebooks & Bringing Prices Down on Lunar Lake & Arrow Lake CPUs

Intel confirmed its fast progress on its next-gen 14A node while discussing the recent NVIDIA partnership & what the future holds for CPUs & GPUs.

Intel 14A Is On Track, Already In Definition Phase & Engaging With External Customers, Brings 2nd Gen GAA & Backside Power Tech

During the 2025 RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media and Telecommunications Conference, Intel's VP, John Pitzer, highlighted several important factors of the upcoming 14A node, which will play a major role for the company, alongwith details on how the NVIDIA parttnership works, and how the Blue Team is navigating through the current market trends which have been hit by tigther supply, and the impending memory crisis.

To start it off, John stated that the company is very positive about how 14A is turning out to be. Intel has yet to roll out its first 18A products, which are expected to arrive later this year with Panther Lake, & ramp is expected in early 2026.

With that said, Intel is comparing 14A to 18A and stating that at the same stage, 14A in its definition stage looks better because they are also engaging with external customers, leading to a mature PDK. Intel's 14A is also going to feature two major innovations, the first one being the second-gen GAA (Gate-All-Around) transistor design and the second one being an optimized backside power delivery.

We are all in on the development of Intel 14A and we're feeling good with the engagements we're having with external customers. And I do think it's important to point out that 14A is in many ways a very different node from an external perspective than Intel 18A.

On 18A, in the definitional phase, we were only engaging with Intel products. It really wasn't until the development phase that we actually started soliciting feedback from external customers, which meant that a lot of the choices we made at the transistor level was really to optimize for the internal product groups instead of external customers. In addition, it was really our first foray into understanding PDKs, process development kits, and we had some growing pains on getting our PDKs to be true industry standard.

I think the big difference on Intel 14A is that we are in the definitional phase, engaging with external customers. What that means is we're getting earlier, more, and better feedback on how we're doing from those external customers at 14A than we did at 18A, and our PDK maturity is much better. We are now bringing to market industry-standard PDKs, both of which help tremendously. I'd also point out that at 18A, we were changing from FinFET to gate-all-around. We were also adding backside power. We were making major changes. At 14A, it's a second-generation gate-all-around. It's a second-generation backside power.

We have stated and been very clear. If you look at where we are today on 14A on performance and yield versus a similar point of development on 18A, we're significantly further ahead on 14A. We're feeling very good about 14A. We are all in on 14A.

John Pitzer - Intel VP of Corporate Planning & Investor Relations

Moving over to the Intel-NVIDIA partnership, John gave us a look at what we can expect from the deal. First up, we have the data center side, in which Intel will provide a custom Xeon CPU to NVIDIA, which will take advantage of the NVLink Fusion interconnect system developed by NVIDIA.

This will allow Intel's x86 CPUs to take advantage of NVIDIA's high-bandwidth interconnect solutions. Arm's Neoverse platform is also going to leverage NVLink Fusion, as announced recently at SC25.

As NVIDIA did more with both Grace and what will be Vera, you know, there were some questions that investors were asking about our ability to sustain that position, and I think the disadvantage we had prior to this collaboration is that both Grace and Vera, I think, utilize, you know, the NVLink integration that we now have with this collaboration with NVIDIA, and so the way the data center side of the relationship is going to work is we will provide them with a custom Xeon part that they will then integrate into their system, and they will have the responsibility of going to market, and we'll get all the benefits of having that NVLink fabric with our custom Xeon.

So this is a custom CPU that you're going to sell directly to NVIDIA. This is not going to a third-party hyperscaler. That's correct, and they will integrate it, and they have the go-to-market responsibility at the system level.

John Pitzer - Intel VP of Corporate Planning & Investor Relations

The client side is more interesting since Intel talks about leveraging NVIDIA's RTX GPU, and integrating that as a separate iGPU Tile on a new class of SoCs. These will be featured first on high-end notebook PCs, but Intel believes that they can broaden the market to mainstream and even lower price point segments.

The company states that they will provide the SoC, but the graphics tile will be sold to the customer by NVIDIA only. This means that we can see a range of configurations of the RTX GPU tile embedded by Intel OEMs & partners.

At the same time, while Intel will be partnering with NVIDIA, both companies will still continue on their exclusive product roadmaps. Just that this new class of chips, or should we say Halo SoCs, will be a new market segment. AMD recently talked about the Intel-NVIDIA partnership and said that while it could create increased competition and pricing pressure, the company is completely confident in its ability to tackle this two-front battle.

Yeah, I think we're going to continue to pursue our own internal strategy, just like on the data center side, NVIDIA will continue to pursue their own strategy with Grace and Vera. You know, time will tell as to what portion of the market this will actually cover, but we are going to be able to bring, I think, a new level of performance on graphics to a notebook-type class PC, clearly initially targeting the high-end, but there are aspirations that we can broaden the market further as we develop this relationship more.

If you look at the client part, I think that clearly we have the opportunity to build really a new class of PC parts that we're pretty excited about, and the way that that relationship is going to work is, you know, they will provide the graphics tile through bailment, which means that the customer will actually pay them for the graphics tile, but we will be responsible for integrating that graphics tile with our CPU and bringing it to market.

John Pitzer - Intel VP of Corporate Planning & Investor Relations

Lastly, Intel discussed the existing supply constraints and increased pressure on the older 10nm and 7nm parts. As such, price hikes are expected on Alder Lake & Raptor Lake CPUs, but at the same time, Intel is going to counter them by decreasing prices of current-gen products such as Arrow Lake & Lunar Lake.

It won't be until the beginning of next year that we start to get wafers out of Arizona with a much better cost structure. And then it's pricing action that we're taking on Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake to kind of navigate through this tight supply situation. And I think the tight supply situation is going to be here for a bit.

And, you know, we're probably deemphasizing the low end of the PC market. And we are raising pricing on parts in 10 and 7 nanometer Raptor Lake because of the tight supply situation. On the other end of the spectrum, because we know we're shorting the market and we're trying to do what's right for our customers, we are bringing price points down on both Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake to fill different parts of the PC stack so that we don't undership the market by too much.

John Pitzer - Intel VP of Corporate Planning & Investor Relations

Intel's next-gen Panther Lake CPUs, based on the 18A process node, are going to be positioned in the premium price range for the first half of 2026. So Intel must have some value-positioned CPU products in the market, and that's what Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake are going to be till the first half of 26. We recently covered how Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs have been discounted by almost 50% in certain regions.

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