“Custom chips will be in fashion after 2025”: Intel could move away from regular CPU releases in a frantic bid to better serve customers and catch up with rivals – but will that be enough?
At the launch of the Meteor Lake chip in New York last year, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger hinted at the company’s future direction. He noted that the company is on track to integrate five new nodes in four years, culminating in 2025. This includes the Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3, Intel 20A and Intel 18A processes, used in a range of server processors.
Going forward, however, Intel hinted that the traditional release schedule could be ditched in favor of shipping products when they’re ready so the company can catch up to the competition.
Intel says this will contribute to its goal of giving customers more options by selling multiple generations of chips at the same time, while meeting demand for custom products.
Chiplets with everything
The tech giant focuses on integrating emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, and chiplets (which the company can put into one package). Intel’s chiplet technologies could eliminate the distinction between server and client products, allowing the company to assemble chips based on customer needs. This could allow Intel to quickly produce custom chips for specific industries.
“When you go to chiplets, you don’t have such a big die, you have a smaller die. As we move to 18A, completing our five nodes in four years, we are tapping the client and server components almost simultaneously. That is something we have never done before,” Gelsinger said HPC wire.
“We’re looking at the Core Ultra package – we’re innovating on the Foveros package (a wafer-level 3D stacking solution that delivers better performance in a smaller footprint), but we’re going to use that on the next-generation server part in this chiplet- architecture, there are so many ways to blur the boundaries between many of our designs,” concludes Gelsinger.
Intel has the distinction of being the only fully integrated chip company that offers chips or manufacturing services to companies that design their own processors. This dual strategy could guarantee Intel’s survival, because while rivals Nvidia, ARM, AMD, Qualcomm and Apple compete for market share, the company gets to produce their products.