Intel's Magdeburg cutting edge fab in Germany will be the first to produce 1.5 nm chips

While Intel may once again be the most profitable semiconductor company according to Gartner, it is still lagging behind TSMC when it comes to advanced production nodes. Still, Team Blue is determined to ramp things up and keep the release schedule on track for this year, as the Arrow Lake CPUs are expected to launch in late 2024 with 20A tech. There is also the 18A process that should begin production in 2H 2024, and CPUs using that node could launch sometime in 2025. Beyond that, things are not really clear, but it looks like Germany could soon become home to Intel’s most advanced production facility for post-18A nodes.

In an interview conducted at the World Economic Forum event held in Davos, Switzerland over the course of this week, Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger revealed that the facility that is right now being built in Magdeburg, Germany is going to be the company's most advanced cutting-edge fab in the world. TSMC and Infineon also invested significant capital to build fabs in this region, but Intel alone managed to obtain a €10 billion subsidy for Magdeburg.

It is still unclear when exactly the Magdeburg fab will come online, since the German government is supposed to distribute the subsidy by 2027. Gelsinger does, however, mention that Magdeburg will be the first to produce chips “on the order of 1.5 nm” for Intel as well as for other companies through the Intel Foundry Services business.

Based on some info leaked in November last year, after 18A, Intel could release chips on 16A and 14A nodes, with production scheduled for ~2026, so the Magdeburg fab may come online around that time frame. It remains to be seen how these sub-18A nodes can fare against TSMC’s and Samsung’s 2 nm tech.

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