“Risk production, while it sounds scary, is actually an industry standard terminology, and the importance of risk production is we’ve gotten the technology to a point where we’re freezing it,” said O’Buckley, “our customers have validated that, ‘Yep, 18 A is good enough for my product.’ And we have to now do the ‘risk’ part, which is to scale it from making hundreds of units per day to thousands, tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands. So risk production is scaling our manufacturing up and ensuring that we can meet not just the capabilities of the technology, but the capabilities at scale.”
18A is the process designed to get ahead of TSMC. While TSMC started risk production on 2nm In Q42024, 18A has backside power delivery which TSMC’s 2nm process doesn’t.
Intel is reported to be running 18A wafers in its Arizona fabs as well as its Oregon development fab.
It is expected that Intel’s next processor generation Panther Lake will be made on 18A. However it is not known whether 18A will be initially for Panther Lake or for external foundry customers
