Intel 18A process node technical details: achieves a density increase of more than 30% compared to Intel 3, and reduces power consumption by 36% in the same frequency.

Passionategeekz On June 22, Intel disclosed the technical details of the next generation of Intel 18A process node at the 2025 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits.

This node will replace the existing Intel 3 nodes, optimize frequency and voltage regulation capabilities, and will be applied to products such as consumer-grade processor “Panther Lake” and server processor Clearwater Forest (pure E-core Xeon).

According to Intel engineers, the Intel 18A process using RibbonFET (full-surround gate GAA) and PowerVia (backside power supply) technology has achieved more than 30% density improvement and “full-node performance improvement” compared to Intel 3, and also provides high-performance (HP) and high-density (HD) libraries, which combine complete design capabilities and ease of use.

Thanks to RibbonFET technology, Intel 18A has made a significant leap compared to Intel 3 using FinFET. The main advantages of RibbonFET are:

• Optimize the gate electrostatic characteristics, with a larger effective width per unit area and lower parasitic capacitance, and further improve design flexibility;

• Introducing a variety of Ribbon widths for the 180H/160H library, balancing logic power consumption/leakage and performance through DTCO (Design Process Collaborative Optimization), custom Bitcell-optimized Ribbon widths for SRAM—to comprehensively enhance the performance and design potential of 18A node chips.

In addition, 18A adopts PowerVia technology, replacing the front-side trace with back-side power supply trace, realizing decoupling and independent optimization of the power supply network, thereby achieving multiple gains:

• Improved logic density

• Standard unit utilization improvement

• The signal RC value decreases

• Voltage drop (droop) shrinkage

• Design flexibility further expands

Through these improvements, the Intel 18A achieves over 15% performance improvements per unit power compared to the Intel 3:

• Performance and energy efficiency: At 1.1V voltage, the performance of 18A in the same frequency is about 25% higher than that of Intel 3; and it supports low voltage operation below 0.65V, and the power consumption of the same frequency is reduced by up to 38%.

• Density improvement: 18A achieves a maximum density increase of 39% (average 30%) compared to Intel 3. The backside power supply increases the unit utilization by 8-10%, the unit utilization by 8-10%, and the extreme IR voltage drop is reduced to the original 10%.

• Parameter comparison: The height of the HP library has dropped from 240nm to 180nm of Intel 3, and the HD library has dropped from 210nm to 160nm; the M0/M2 metal layer spacing is optimized from 30/42nm to 32/32nm.

• SRAM Scaling: The density of 18A high current cell (HCC) is 30% higher than that of Intel 3, and the areas of HCC and HDC SRAMs reach 0.0230μm² and 0.0210μm² respectively.

Intel said that the 18A process will continue to iterate: 18A-P and 18A-PT derivative versions will be launched in 2026-2028 (Passionategeekz Note: announced at the 2025 Direct Connect Conference), and customers will open up chip production based on these nodes.

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