Six months after Lip-Bu Tan took the helm at Intel, the company announced the launch of a new family of Intel Core Ultra processors, codenamed Panther Lake. These are the first chips built using Intel’s 18A technological process, which is set to be the foundation for the company’s recovery as a market leader. Production has started at the factory in Chandler, Arizona, highlighting the company’s strategic shift towards American manufacturing.<\/p>
The heart of the 18A process are two key technologies: RibbonFET and PowerVia. The former is a new transistor architecture and successor to the long-used FinFET technology, It utilizes a gate-all-around<\/em> (GAA) architecture where the gate completely surrounds the transistor channel. According to Intel, this allows for more precise current flow control, leading to further miniaturization and reduced leakage.<\/p> The second element is PowerVia \u2014 a solution that, for the first time in the industry, moves the power lines to the back (bottom) of the silicon wafer. Previously, power and signal paths were located on the front of the chip, which, with the increasing density of transistors, led to bottlenecks and performance losses. According to the company, separating these two layers is expected to improve cell utilization by 5\u201310% and boost performance by up to 4% at the same power consumption.<\/p> The 18A process doesn’t only bring changes at the transistor level, but also a new approach to the whole circuit design. Intel is betting on advanced packaging techniques, such as Foveros Direct 3D and EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge<\/em>), which allow to integrate multiple smaller circuits (known as chiplets) into one complex whole, like building blocks. This modular construction enables flexible processor design, for example by combining computational cores made in the latest 18A process with chiplets responsible for I\/O, produced using older and cheaper technology. The first server processor to use this approach is expected to be the Xeon 6+ (Clearwater Forest<\/em>), which is slated to debut in the first half of 2026.<\/p> Intel emphasizes strongly that 18A is the most advanced lithographic process manufactured in North America. The company presents it as an alternative for customers looking for a stable and resilient supply chain. This focus on the manufacturing location fits into a broader political context. Just a few weeks after CEO Tan’s meeting with President Donald Trump in August 2025, the U.S. government acquired a 10% stake in the company. The aim of this partnership is to bring semiconductor production back to the United States.<\/p> Intel’s technological turnaround is more than just an engineering feat. It’s a strategic game where the stakes are not only the future of the company but also the shape of the global semiconductor supply chain. The US administration has clearly already picked its side.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Intel unveils 18A chip technology amid competition for market share, a new Arizona factory, and U.S. government support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":15342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[813],"tags":[707,971,972],"popular":[],"difficulty-level":[36],"ppma_author":[884],"class_list":["post-15476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-news-2","tag-ai-5","tag-intel-2","tag-processor","difficulty-level-easy"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":884,"user_id":230,"is_guest":0,"slug":"karolina-ceron","display_name":"Karolina Cero\u0144","avatar_url":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/PXL_20250419_110132091.MP4-scaled.jpg","first_name":"Karolina","last_name":"Cero\u0144","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":"Wsp\u00f3\u0142tw\u00f3rczyni newslettera AI Flash, studentka psychologii i pasjonatka sztucznej inteligencji. Interesuj\u0119 si\u0119 wp\u0142ywem nowych technologii na cz\u0142owieka, a w wolnych chwilach eksperymentuj\u0119 z generatywn\u0105 grafik\u0105 w Midjourney."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15477,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15476\/revisions\/15477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15476"},{"taxonomy":"popular","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/popular?post=15476"},{"taxonomy":"difficulty-level","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/difficulty-level?post=15476"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=15476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Block architecture, or 3D packing<\/strong><\/h4>
A patriotic manufacturing<\/strong><\/h4>