Intel has officially announced its next-generation manufacturing process, 18A. This process, introduced at the 2025 VLSI Symposium, offers significant gains in both performance and energy efficiency compared to Intel 3 technology. Playing a key role in the company’s restructuring process, 18A will be Intel’s most advanced manufacturing node to date.

Intel offers increased performance with 18A manufacturing process

The 18A process was developed together with Intel’s next-generation PowerVia and BSPDN (Backside Power Delivery Network) technologies. These two structures change the placement of transistors and reduce the connection complexity on the front surface, while increasing performance by providing energy transmission directly from the back surface.

According to the technical comparisons made, the 18A manufacturing process provides 25 percent higher processing speed and 36 percent lower power consumption compared to Intel 3 on a standard Arm core sub-block. The data obtained showed that 18A not only significantly increases power consumption, but also area efficiency.

Thanks to PowerVia technology, power transmission is done from the back surface of the transistors. This method allows more processor cells to be placed on the front surface of the chip, while allowing connections to be simplified. This creates a more efficient structure for high-density designs.

Intel is expected to use the 18A process first in its own Panther Lake system chips and Clearwater Forest server processors belonging to the Xeon series. Here are the most important and striking details about the much-talked-about topic recently…