Intel just gave up on a plan it laid out years ago

Intel is giving up on its 20A node, or at the very least, it won’t show up in any desktop processors. Intel announced that it would shifting resources away from developing 20A toward its smaller 18A node. Intel 20A was the foundation of Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake CPUs. The company says it’s now using “external partners” to create Arrow Lake chips, which will likely be chipmaker TSMC.

We first heard about the 20A node in 2021, where the then-new CEO Pat Gelsinger laid out a road map detailing how Intel would move off its storied 14nm node onto smaller manufacturing processes. You could read this shift to 18A as Intel jumping forward to more exciting future technology, but it doesn’t bode well given Intel’s long-standing road map. The release of 20A was supposed to start the “Angstrom era,” as Intel called it, where we would move beyond measuring transistor size in nanometers.

It’s hard not to read defeat given the recent troubles Intel has faced. Last month, Intel announced it would lay off 15% of its workforce prior to an earnings call. During that call, Intel reported historic revenue drops, leading investors to sue the company. In addition, Intel’s manufacturing business is in hot water, as Intel-produced wafers have failed tests from Broadcom, reports Reuters.

The larger shifts in the company have taken center stage, but Intel has had a challenging year up to this point overall. Its desktop CPUs experienced a wave of instability over recent months, hurting the trust the brand had built up among PC enthusiasts.

Still, it’s clear Intel remains focused primarily on its foundry business. It was one of the key drivers behind the 2022 Chips and Science Act, which could grant the company as much as $20 billion to build out domestic chip manufacturing. The company has yet to receive any money from the program, and internally, Intel is frustrated with what it sees as the government delaying payments, reports Bloomberg.

Despite these issues, Intel has landed some critical clients for its foundry business. In February, Microsoft signed on to produce its own chip on Intel’s 18A node, as did the U.S. Department of Defense.

Perhaps the big contracts on this node is why Intel decided to shift resources, especially as the company struggles to get its financials under control. “The journey to Intel 18A has been built on the groundwork laid by Intel 20A. It enabled us to explore and refine new techniques, materials and transistor architectures that are crucial for advancing Moore’s Law,” wrote Ben Sell, Intel’s vice president of technology development. “Focusing resources on Intel 18A also helps us optimize our engineering investments.”

Intel recently canceled its Innovation event, which was scheduled for September. We expected to learn more about Arrow Lake at the event. Despite troubles with 20A, Intel recently pulled back the curtain on its Lunar Lake CPUs, which are arriving in laptops later this month.