Intel CEO Confirms TSMC’s Process Nodes To Power Next-Gen CPUs: N3 For Arrow Lake & N3B For Lunar Lake

23.02.2024 - 12:52 / wccftech.com / Hassan Mujtaba

In a press and analyst session following the IFS Direct 2024 event, Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that Chipzilla is leveraging TSMC's advanced process node technology to power its upcoming CPUs codenamed Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake.

Intel Arrow Lake To Utilize TSMC N3 Node While Lunar Lake Gets TSMC's N3B Node, Confirms CEO Pat Gelsinger

During the session, Pat stated that Intel has been collaborating with TSMC for its CPU designs and that next-gen CPUs such as Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake will advance this from 5nm to 3nm nodes.

Related Story Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs Get Xe-LPG, Arrow Lake-H Mobile CPUs Get Xe-LPG+ iGPU

Intel Arrow Lake CPUs are going to be a major product launch for the company later this year and are powered by Intel's in-house 20A process node. Previous details have already pointed out the use of TSMC's 3nm (N3) process node for the GPU tile. While the GPU tile accommodates the same iGPU architecture as Meteor Lake, aka Alchemist "Xe-LPG", there will be certain optimizations made for the mobility lineup in the form of the Xe-LPG+ architecture. Furthermore, the shift from N5 to N3 will result in a nice improvement in efficiency and performance.

Meanwhile, Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs are expected to utilize the same P-Core (Lion Cove) and brand-new E-Core (Skymont) core architecture which are expected to be fabricated on the 20A node. But that might also be limited to the CPU tile. The GPU tile will be a significant upgrade over the Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs since Lunar Lake ditches Alchemist and goes for the next-gen graphics architecture codenamed Battlemage "Xe2-LPG". It is stated that Intel will be employing the use of TSMC's N3B process node for the production of its Lunar Lake GPU tiles. So in short:

• Intel Arrow Lake: 20A (CPU Tile) / TSMC N3 (GPU Tile)
• Intel Lunar Lake: 20A? (CPU Tile) / TSMC N3B (GPU Tile)

Not just that, there are already reports that Intel's future client CPU codenamed Nova Lake will also be leveraging from TSMC's advanced process nodes. Nova Lake CPUs are expected to utilize a 2nm node though if either a certain tile or the whole chip will be fabricated the N2 node. Intel, despite committing to 4 nodes in 5 years plan, has shown strong dependency on TSMC to meet its supply demand for its client CPUs.

During IFS Direct 2024, the company rebranded its Foundry Services to simply Intel Foundry and added a new 14A node besides several sub-variants of existing nodes. Intel's discrete GPU family already makes use of TSMC's N6 process node and we can expect that to remain the case moving forward with Battlemage discrete lineup which is expected for launch later this year too.

News Sources: ChinaTimes, DigiTimes