Intel announced its foundry business expansion plan on July 26. Specifically, it launched the Intel Foundry Service and announced that Qualcomm and Amazon are now its clients.

Intel is aiming to regain its leading position in the foundry industry by 2025. To this end, the company is going to release a new process technology every year until then. At present, TSMC is accounting for 55 percent of the global foundry market and the runner-up is Samsung Electronics with a share of 17 percent.

Intel entered the market in 2016 and withdrew from it in 2018. In March this year, the company declared its re-entry and said that it would invest US$20 billion in the market. An interesting point is that it is going to call upgraded 10-nm process technology Intel7, 7-nm Intel4, and 0.1-nm 1A. “We are going to make public Intel 20A in 2024 and Intel 18A in 2025,” it explained, adding, “Qualcomm will utilize our 20A chip manufacturing process and Amazon will utilize our packaging technology.”

This is the first time that a semiconductor company officially mentioned a process technology more advanced than 3-nm. Previously, Samsung Electronics and TSMC mentioned 3-nm process schedules. “The existing nanometer-based expressions that are used by foundries are confusing as those do not reflect actual gate lengths,” Intel said, adding, “Our new terms are to help our clients to better understand manufacturing processes.”