April 29th marked a significant milestone for us, providing an opportunity to share the work our teams accomplished over this past year with over 1,000 customers and partners in attendance at this year’s Direct Connect. Above all, we wanted to convey our heartfelt gratitude for the insights and feedback shared by our customers and partners. We listened to your feedback, and Direct Connect served as the perfect platform to present adjustments we’ve made to our roadmaps, services, and ecosystem programs. Below are a few moments that stood out for us.
Lip-Bu Tan’s First Intel Foundry Event and Earning Customer Trust
We were honored to have Lip-Bu join us at the start of the day, emphasizing our commitment to customer service and reinforcing the importance of humility and listening as pillars that energize customer excellence. Starting the day off with our ecosystem partners, followed by deeper dives in our ecosystem hour at mid-day, allowed us to answer questions we receive often. When choosing Intel Foundry, customers want to understand the depth of our ecosystem engagements and level of support they can expect across EDA, IP, and design houses—especially regarding tool support for industry-first features like PowerVia, RibbonFET, and advanced packaging technology such as EMIB-T and Foveros Direct 3D.
We thought it was important for customers to hear directly from our partners about the work we collectively engage in. We were delighted to have Lip-Bu joined on stage by industry executive leaders from Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens EDA, and PDF Solutions. Together, they underscored the significance of our collaborative efforts in key areas, including Intellectual Property, Digital Design Flows, Designing for Manufacturability, and Designing for Yield. Many attendees expressed appreciation for the strong ecosystem collaboration and support.
Naga Chandrasekaran’s Tour Around the Globe, with Intel 18A and Intel 14A Updates
Naga’s keynote took us on a tour of our global facilities, highlighting advancements across our expanding portfolio of process nodes and robust advanced packaging offerings. We were thrilled to share updates on Intel 18A’s progress, which is now in risk production with five products running in Oregon. Naga highlighted that engineering samples are with customers, and qualification samples are currently underway. He shared several more key points on Intel 18A’s progress:
- Our best wafers have met defect density targets. (1)
- Defect density is progressing as planned to achieve our entitlements, with a 15% performance and 30% chip density improvement compared to Intel 3. (1)
These indicators put us on a path to reach volume production at the end of 2025.
Naga also shared more details on Intel 18A-P, with 8% further performance improvement beyond Intel 18A, and disclosed Intel 18A-PT as a roadmap addition, offering the first base die with backside power plus design rule compatibility with Intel 18A-P. He disclosed more about Intel 14A—its 15-20% expected performance increase, 30% density improvement, and 25-35% power reduction when compared to Intel 18A—and how the lessons learned on Intel 18A are speeding our path to market on that node. (1) Lastly, the audience seemed to enjoy Naga’s newest pet: Chip. For more on Chip, see the photo below and the full keynote to watch Chip in action.
Kevin O’Buckley’s Announcements on New Alliances and a Partnership with Amkor
Kevin shared the “why” behind key changes Naga discussed to the roadmap. He explained how AI-era applications increasingly require higher performance levels, necessitating complex multi-chip solutions that overcome reticle limits through cutting-edge packaging technologies. To address these needs, we announced two new alliances under the Intel Foundry Accelerator Ecosystem Alliance Program. The first is the Value Chain Alliance, delivering a network of ASIC design companies, aiding delivery of specification-to-silicon solutions where partners require help bringing these solutions across the finish line. The second is the Chiplet Alliance, focusing on delivering interoperable, secure chiplet implementations—plug and play building blocks that can accelerate time to market.
But configurable building blocks and design assistance are only part of the multi-chip solution landscape. Kevin also shared our latest advanced packaging and test offerings. Our Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technology continues to address the market’s need for complex high-performance solutions with the addition of TSVs with the new EMIB-T. He announced the expansion of our Foveros portfolio of products to include silicon interposers (Foveros-S), RDLs (Foveros-R), and bridges (Foveros-B) to provide flexibility to match the needs of customers. Lastly, Kevin discussed the expansion of our packaging ecosystem with new commercial tester capabilities and improved supply chain resiliency. Kevin Engel, COO of Amkor, joined Kevin to announce that Amkor would be qualifying our EMIB bridges, offering customers greater supply chain diversity, with OSAT locations beginning in 2026 at its Korea location.
There was so much more information shared in these keynotes and throughout the day. We will summarize the impact and details in additional blogs over the next few weeks. To all of our valued guests who shared their time and voices, we can’t thank you enough.
1. Source: Intel Internal Analyses, 2024 and 2025. Results may vary.