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Comment by adrian_b | Hacker News Reader

The only question that matters is how far behind TSMC they are.

Intel has just said that unless a miracle will bring them serious external customers for their 14A CMOS process, they will stop developing it, which would leave the Intel 18A manufacturing process (to be used for Panther Lake later this year) as the last Intel manufacturing process.

In that case, there will be only 3 state-of-the-art semiconductor makers, TSMC, Samsung & Rapidus, with no American or European competitor.

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> Intel has just said that unless a miracle will bring them serious external customers for their 14A CMOS process, they will stop developing it

Here's the actual quote:

> This Form 10-Q contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Words such as "accelerate", "achieve", "aim", "ambitions", "anticipate", "believe", "committed", "continue", "could", "designed", "estimate", "expect", "forecast", "future", "goals", "grow", "guidance", "intend", "likely", "may", "might", "milestones", "next generation", "objective", "on track", "opportunity", "outlook", "pending", "plan", "position", "possible", "potential", "predict", "progress", "ramp", "roadmap", "seek", "should", "strive", "targets", "to be", "upcoming", "will", "would", and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements, which may include statements regarding:

> ...

> potential pause or discontinuation of our pursuit of Intel 14A and other next generation leading-edge process technologies if we are unable to secure a significant external customer for Intel 14A;

I think it's pretty obvious that it's more of a statement to legally cover the company's behind from investor lawsuits than the current plan, and the fact this wasn't repeated anywhere else more prominent backs that up.

Given Intel's history of being in denial about their troubles (in spite of the apparent risk of investor lawsuits), them suggesting they might cancel 14A and beyond should be taken seriously. That statement could just as easily be their way of breaking the news as gently and gradually as possible.

Who’s going to invest their time taping out with a foundry that warns they might pull the plug on future development? It’s self-sabotage, unless of course the point of prolific investor and CEO Lip Bu Tan is to strip the company for parts

> self-sabotage

Potentially using market dynamics to force a direction that not everyone in the company could otherwise be convinced to go along with. It does feel like Intel's equivalent to the infamous Nokia "Burning platform" memo.

It is unlikely that Intel will secure an external customer for any process node given concerns about handing IP to a competitor combined with Intel’s past IP theft incidents (e.g. they stole from DEC to build the pentium processor). Thus we can assume that 14A will be discontinued.

Intel has multiple external customers for 18A.

Are they significant?

> European competitor.

...and almost everyone uses ASML's machines. Honestly interesting. Canon was going to build a lower cost machine competitive with ASMLs, I wonder how it's going.

...and I'm also wondering whether Nikon and Canon still make the lenses for these machines.

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