Intel Talks 3nm at VLSI Conference

Intel has made much of their intent to launch five technology nodes in four years—the Intel 3 node is the third of them, following the Intel 7 and Intel 4 nodes. At the VLSI Symposium in Hawaii in June, we had a fairly detailed summary of what to expect.

As well as being the last FinFET node on Intel's roadmap, the Intel 3 node is the second generation using extreme ultra-violet (EUV) lithography. It is in high volume manufacturing in both Oregon and Ireland, producing two strains of Xeon 6 processors, and is also available to potential foundry customers. In Intel’s Xeon products, it is used to manufacture efficiency cores (E-cores) formerly known as Sierra Forest (MPR March 2022, “Xeon Roadmap Shows Delays”) and Granite Rapids performance cores (P-cores). TechInsights has already compared the Intel 3 node with other foundry processes; here we will go into more detail of the VLSI Symposium paper.