In a potentially embarrassing turn for Intel, new rumors have surfaced that suggest its upcoming Arrow Lake CPUs, which were originally scheduled to be built on the company’s own 20A process, will now be built on TSMC’s 3-nanometer technology instead. Intel stated early last year that 20A would deliver “up to a 15% performance per watt improvement and will be manufacturing-ready in the first half of 2024,” but some of that may have changed.
There had been some rumors circulating that Intel might have dropped its 20A process node which was going to play a big role in the development of the next-gen Arrow Lake CPUs. The first rumors came from Twitter fellow, @Xinoassassin1, who stated that Intel might be dropping 20A in favor of TSMC’s 3nm node. It had been pointed that TSMC’s N3B node was in discussion to be the potential candidate for Arrow Lake which is the baseline version of TSMC’s 3nm process node which entered production in 2H 2022.
Sad outcome… pic.twitter.com/zFZxOCK1O2
— Tempos Lamorant (@TLamorant) July 4, 2023