At the moment, Intel is the largest manufacturer and seller of processors in different segments. Although the company is well established, its main competitor is gaining ground. The company’s strength lies in its manufacturing processes, such as the intel node 4the most advanced and that will be used in the Meteor Lake processors.
In case you didn’t know, a processor is made up of hundreds of millions of tiny transistors. Developing the manufacturing processes or nodes to produce processors with so many transistors is very complicated. It requires special machines and extremely controlled environments.
The world’s major foundries (as chipmakers are called) are in a constant race to make smaller and smaller transistors. But there is a technical limit and that is that it is estimated that the 1 nm size of the silicon transistor cannot be exceeded.
Intel 4 node is superior to other manufacturers
Some time ago Intel changed the nomenclature of its manufacturing nodes to make them more “commercial”. The company will start using the Intel 4 node on Meteor Lake processors. This node is based on transistors of only 7nm, really small. For this manufacturing process, the system of EUV lithograph.
According to research firm IC Knowledge, the intel node 4 would be for in front of of the process of 5nm from TSMC. Recall that the Taiwanese foundry (TSMC) manufactures AMD Ryzen processors. And if that was not enough, equal to to the process of 3nm que ha creado TSMC and also to that of samsung.
Maybe you do not fully understand the importance of this, but we will explain it to you. This new process should allow Meteor Lake processors take a huge performance leap compared to the current 13th Generation. In addition, it should significantly improve consumptionmaking them more efficient.
The research firm says the The Intel D1 factory in Oregon already implements this process. This means that Meteor Lake will be produced entirely in this plant under the Intel 4 node.
Currently, this Oregon plant has a capacity of production of about 40,000 chips per month in all the manufacturing processes that it integrates. We do not know what other processes are manufactured in this plant and what would be the proportion of chips based on Intel 4.
IC Knowledge points out that the Intel Fab 34 located in Ireland might as well produce chips under the Intel node 4. The problem is that it is currently in the process of manufacturing test chips.
The best process within the industry
Currently, Intel 4 allows the use of Backside Power Delivery, referred to by the company as PowerVia. This is a process that places on the back of the chip a solution to solve the bottlenecks in the interconnection of silicon architectures. Said process will be used in the Meteor Lake E-Cores, making the efficient cores significantly better in performance.
We can see that Intel 4 focuses on energy efficiency, offering more performance and better technology than the competition. Something that we will have to verify with the arrival of the Meteor Lake chips on the market-
The company is already working on the Intel 3 node, which would have a transistor size of 5nm. Said manufacturing process should be ready by the end of this year. In addition, they are already working on the Intel 20A and 18A nodes that should be ready in 2024. Little else is known about these new nodes, at the moment.
