Intel's Strategic Shift: Harnessing TSMC's 2nm Tech for Groundbreaking 'Nova Lake' CPUs

TSMC's 2nm technology has sparked significant customer interest, with companies such as Apple and Intel lined up to get the inaugural manufacturing batch amid high demand.

Intel To Use TSMC's 2nm Process In Next-Generation ‘Nova Lake’ CPUs

According to Taiwan Economic Daily, Apple, Intel, and other businesses have expressed interest in TSMC's first batch of 2nm chips, which are slated to go into production in 2025. Since Apple has been an exclusive customer of TSMC, it is said that the company has managed to reserve a portion of the 2nm supply for its next-generation iPhones.

As previously stated, we may see the process debut with Apple's iPhone 17 Pro, which will feature successors to the A-series SoCs, assuming the company sticks to its current naming scheme.

Aside from Apple, Team Blue is expected to join TSMC's 2nm customer list because the company plans to use it in its forthcoming Nova Lake CPU lineup. The industry hasn't heard much about Nova Lake, primarily because the release is still years away, but we did catch a glimpse of it recently when the well-known software application HWiNFO added support for the lineup's integrated graphics, which could be an upgraded version of Xe3-LPG or Intel's "Druid" architecture.

‘Nova Lake’ CPUs: Intel's Pivotal Leap Forward with TSMC's 2nm Process for 2026 Release

While we don't know much about Nova Lake CPUs yet, it's supposed to be Intel's most significant architectural upgrade in history, surpassing even the Core architecture, as per WCCFTech. The CPU performance improvement is rumored to be more than 50% over the Lunar Lake chips, which is why Intel's decision to use TSMC's 2nm process makes sense, as the company's foundry service lacks cutting-edge processes, and in order to remain competitive in next-generation markets, the firm needs to adopt a more "mature" semiconductor supplier. The CPUs are slated for a 2026 release.

Intel Foundry is progressing steadily, particularly after the company announced a relationship with Taiwan's second-largest foundry, UMC, but it appears that IFS has yet to establish confidence in its impending processes. Even if the company's "apparently" superior 18A process will go into production by H2 2024, using TSMC's 2nm for its mainstream CPU architecture raises issues about Intel's semiconductor division strategy, but let's not jump to conclusions.

Photo: Briáxis F. Mendes (孟必思), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons