There's a positive signal coming from the next 14A process in Intel. The company ' s management has recently indicated that the density of deficiencies in this process is decreasing faster than the internal target, indicating that its capacity to manufacture the crystal circle is improving. However, the surrogate business has not been able to recover from the large losses and the outreach of external clients has not yet yielded decisive results.

14A Improved deficiency density

David Zinsner, Chief Financial Officer of Intel, stated at the Deutsche Bank ' s Science and Technology Conference that 14A had a better deficiency density than the internal target curve. This is the rare strong sign of improvement since Intel's 22 nano-program.

Declining fault density usually means that the number of chips available on each crystal circle has a better chance of increasing. But this does not mean that the ultimate good rate has been achieved. The size of the chip, the complexity of the design and the distribution of the defects affect the eventual availability of marketable products.

The production time is still 2027 years later.

According to Intel's plan, 14A will enter the risk test in the second half of 2027, with the goal of high-yield manufacturing by 2028. The program will combine second-generation RibbonFET transistor, PowerDirect back-side power supply, and High-NA EUV optical carving technology.

  • Compared to 18A, performance increased by 15% to 20% as a function
  • Under the same performance, the amount of energy consumed is down 25% to 35%.
  • The maximum transistor density is about 30%.

These, however, remain corporate objectives and are not independent test results for the production of the chips.

External clients remain key

According to financial data, the income from the second quarter of Inteldale Industries was $5,765 million, up from $4,417 million during the same period of the previous year; however, the sector continued to run a deficit of $2,089 million during the current quarter, which was more than 30 per cent of the income from the operation.

Of even greater concern is the fact that only $293 million of this income comes from external clients, and approximately $5.5 billion is the internal business settlement, mainly related to Intel's own products. This means that the real return to competitiveness of the substitute business will depend on the willingness of external clients to hand over more chip designs to Intel for production.

Zinsner indicates that the potential 14A client discussion has moved from looking at technical data to asking how much capacity Intel can provide. To date, however, Intel has not published large-scale external binding production contracts related to 14A.

The recent improvement in Intel performance has also been driven by a rebound in the demand for AI chips. The company grew by 25 per cent to $16.1 billion in the second quarter of the year. For the company, 14A will be a turning point for the substitute business, and it will depend not only on whether the deficiencies continue to decline, but also on whether the good rates, external orders and the narrow margins of losses advance simultaneously.