TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Intel is changing the way it names its process technologies to match leading rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manu

Intel renames process nodes to mirror Taiwan’s TSMC

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2021-07-28 07:30:08

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Intel is changing the way it names its process technologies to match leading rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC).

During the Intel Accelerated event held on Monday (July 26), company CEO Pat Gelsinger announced Intel’s process timeline for its next five generations of nodes up until 2025, according to PC Gamer. Intel is also changing how it names its process nodes to better align with naming conventions used by competitors TSMC and Samsung.

Nanometer terminology is used to denote the gate length of a transistor, but the correlation between the actual distance and name of the node has changed over time, according to Tom’s Hardware. After transistors went three-dimensional with the move to FinFET architecture in 2011, the correlation was severed entirely.

Under the new rebranding, Intel’s third-generation 10 nm chips will be referred to as “Intel 7” going forward. Intel’s 10 nm chips are broadly comparable to TSMC and Samsung’s 7 nm chips, as they all use similar manufacturing technologies and offer comparable transistor density, according to The Verge.

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