NVIDIA had reportedly tested Intel's 18A chips following their $5 billion 'mega-deal,' according to a new report, but the sampling didn't yield decisive results for the foundry division.
Intel’s 18A Node May Be an Option, But 14A Process Remains the Primary Goal for External Clients
Intel Foundry is pursuing a breakthrough, and one of the ways the firm is aiming to achieve it is by securing external customers for its chips, such as the 18A and 14A. Earlier reports have suggested that there has been massive interest from companies like Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, and Qualcomm; however, each fabless manufacturer is waiting to see how volume ramp-up and Intel's internal process adoption turn out. Interestingly, a report by Reuters, discussing the backstory of the conflict between Intel's CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, and President Trump, reveals that NVIDIA had sampled the 18A process.
While Intel is picking up steam on the deals front, its manufacturing unit has struggled to produce quality in-house chips. Nvidia recently tested out whether it would manufacture its chips using Intel’s production process known as 18A but stopped moving forward, two people familiar with the matter said.
- Reuters
Before dismissing this report as overly pessimistic for Intel Foundry, several key considerations should be factored in. The first and foremost is that the 18A node is repeatedly being pitched as an internal product, and it is optimized for solutions like the Panther Lake, where the core focus is on power-efficient performance. Intel has expressed in the past that it anticipates external adoption with its next-gen 14A node, which is more oriented towards what customers like NVIDIA demand, namely HPC-class performance.
And more importantly, PDK sampling is a process that almost every fabless manufacturer undergoes when interacting with a foundry. We do know that when it comes to the 2nm process, NVIDIA has already secured capacity at TSMC for their N2 node, so Intel wasn't a primary option for Team Green in this process class. When Intel and NVIDIA CEOs discussed their $5 billion partnership in a webcast, CEO Tan reiterated that the deal is based on collaborative grounds within the x86 segment and doesn't cover foundry matters at all.
The Reuters report also provided insight into how discussions with the Trump administration led to a new lifeline for Intel, as it not only brought in a capital injection but also positioned the chipmaker as a priority for the US government. The report also says that foreign fabs such as TSMC are concerned about the government officials tipping the "scales for customers to manufacture with Intel", which indicates that Team Blue has emerged as a massive influence for fabs looking to produce in the US.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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