Intel has secured Microsoft as a major foundry client for its 18A process, sources say

[Alfonso Maruccia]

In a nutshell: Intel has been struggling to establish a competitive chip foundry business for years. Now, industry sources indicate the US corporation is set to manufacture the next few generations of AI accelerators to support Microsoft's massive data center expansion, highlighting Intel's renewed push to capture a larger share of the growing AI hardware market.

According to a recent report from SemiAccurate, Microsoft has chosen Intel Foundry to manufacture its Maia 3 AI chip. The machine learning accelerator, code-named Griffin, is expected to play a major role in Redmond's plans to develop new generations of self-sustaining data centers.

Maia 3 is an upgrade to Microsoft's earlier Maia projects, which the company continues to present as a potential alternative to third-party AI chips. In a recent interview, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott confirmed that Redmond is developing its next AI chips even as most of its current AI cloud workloads still rely on Nvidia's GPU technology.

If the Maia 3 project goes as planned, rumors suggest that Microsoft could continue using Intel's foundry to manufacture the next few generations of the AI chip. Maia 3 production would rely on Intel's 18A process, which provides some interesting food for thought if previous reports are accurate.

Chipzilla was reportedly facing significant setbacks with its process node only a few months ago. Manufacturing issues such as low yields and poor quality threatened to derail Intel's earlier expectations. Now, the company is introducing 18A as a process ready for customer projects and the first advanced sub-2-nanometer manufacturing node available in North America.

The Maia 3 chip could use Intel's 18A or even its 18A-P node. The second-generation 18A process is designed to improve both performance and power efficiency, with specific optimizations for threshold voltage and leakage. Microsoft's next-generation Maia chips could employ even more advanced nodes such as 18A-PT or 14A.

Intel specifically designed the 18A-PT node for customers in the artificial intelligence and high-performance computing sectors. Building on the performance and power efficiency gains achieved with 18A, the new process offers greater package scalability and integration capabilities to further enhance generative AI workloads and chatbot performance.

The number of rumors and manufacturing deals related to Intel Foundry is starting to resemble a financial roller coaster, but Microsoft's alleged Maia 3 plans should be taken with a grain of salt. Earlier this month, industry insiders claimed that Intel could begin manufacturing x86 chips for AMD. Meanwhile, the company's plans for its upcoming PC client CPUs appear to be proceeding as expected.

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Intel has secured Microsoft as a major foundry client for its 18A process, sources say

 

[yRaz]

I doubled my money by using the money from selling my nVidia stock and buying Intel with it. People thought the sky was falling when it came out that the 14900K was failure prone. The had a couple bad eggs, but they still have solid products and recovered quickly in what was a hiccup in an otherwise solid history. I've always been an AMD guy for my PCs, but I have 14 xeons in my homelab. And Intels new chips aren't bad. Sure, they're slower, but you can find deals on them all the time. It's not like we're back in the pentium 4 days. Intel trades blows with AMD's non-X3D chips in games. Further, their 18A process is arguably more advanced than what TSMC is currently offering.

I know this comment is going to attract a lot of heat, but I said what I said and I put my money where my mouth is.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I doubled my money by using the money from selling my nVidia stock and buying Intel with it. People thought the sky was falling when it came out that the 14900K was failure prone. The had a couple bad eggs, but they still have solid products and recovered quickly in what was a hiccup in an otherwise solid history. I've always been an AMD guy for my PCs, but I have 14 xeons in my homelab. And Intels new chips aren't bad. Sure, they're slower, but you can find deals on them all the time. It's not like we're back in the pentium 4 days. Intel trades blows with AMD's non-X3D chips in games. Further, their 18A process is arguably more advanced than what TSMC is currently offering.

I know this comment is going to attract a lot of heat, but I said what I said and I put my money where my mouth is.

Assuming you sold and bought at the lowest point, then yes you did well beating the market. nVidia is only up 83% since that day. So long as nvidia continues to stall out and intel gets pumped up based on....whatever positive news is pumping them up. Given they are still losing billions per quarter, I dont see that stock price rising any higher then the all time high of ~50 they once hit.

I dont know why you write these comments up if the responses bother you so much though.....

 

[airbornex]

If Microsoft actually ships Maia 3 on Intel 18A it would be the first time in like a decade that Intel’s marketing slide decks materialize into something physically real at scale.

 

[yRaz]

Assuming you sold and bought at the lowest point, then yes you did well beating the market. nVidia is only up 83% since that day. So long as nvidia continues to stall out and intel gets pumped up based on....whatever positive news is pumping them up. Given they are still losing billions per quarter, I dont see that stock price rising any higher then the all time high of ~50 they once hit.

I dont know why you write these comments up if the responses bother you so much though.....

the responses don't bother me, you're endless arguing does. I bought intel in February for ~$19.50 a share. Private equity and banks have slowed financing AI data centers, it's only a matter of time before the crash comes and nVidia is obscenely over valued. I'd rather deposit my money at a casino than hold onto NV stock right now. Their entire business model relies on companies borrowing money from banks and private equity firms to build data centers.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

the responses don't bother me, you're endless arguing does.

Well there was an easy way to fix that, just provide any source that backed up your arguments. But that was a bridge too far.

I bought intel in February for ~$19.50 a share. Private equity and banks have slowed financing AI data centers, it's only a matter of time before the crash comes and nVidia is obscenely over valued. I'd rather deposit my money at a casino than hold onto NV stock right now. Their entire business model relies on companies borrowing money from banks and private equity firms to build data centers.

I agree NVidia is unsustainable, but I dont see how intel is sustainable. They're being pushed by.....actually what is driving this stock growth? They're losing more money than ever. Is it all hype over a single node? Sales certainly are not helping them.

If Microsoft actually ships Maia 3 on Intel 18A it would be the first time in like a decade that Intel’s marketing slide decks materialize into something physically real at scale.

I'd be hesitant to believe this will actually provide fruit. Intel's nodes have consistently underperformed for nearly a decade now. Intel is really pushing 18A forward, but as the article points out they recently were struggling hard with said node. We haven't heard of any major breakthrough or success, just sudden business deals.

It's a safer bet that Maia 3 will either quietly change to TSMC or will wind up with very poor yields and Intel losing money having to give discounts to keep MS around.

 

[yRaz]

I agree NVidia is unsustainable, but I dont see how intel is sustainable. They're being pushed by.....actually what is driving this stock growth? They're losing more money than ever. Is it all hype over a single node? Sales certainly are not helping them.

Intels 18A node is more advanced than TSMCs 3NM. They currently don't have consumer confidence after their 13000/14000 chip fiasco. I really don't care if you trust my opinion or not, but I firmly believe that Intel will be the US's TSMC 10 years from now and still buy intel stock every month

 

[lorac]

Intels 18A node is more advanced than TSMCs 3NM. They currently don't have consumer confidence after their 13000/14000 chip fiasco. I really don't care if you trust my opinion or not, but I firmly believe that Intel will be the US's TSMC 10 years from now and still buy intel stock every month

TSMC launched 3NM in 2022. Intel doesn't need to beat that, they need to beat what TSMC is working on for their future chips which Intel is way behind on.
.
Intel is running in a 5 lap race starting 3 laps behind TSMC.

 

[Kashim]

Intels 18A node is more advanced than TSMCs 3NM.

If their 18A node was more advanced then why are they outsourcing their chips to TSMC? Your comment makes no sense.