Intel's Panther Lake 18A node matches TSMC N3E density

A teardown of Intel's new Panther Lake chip shows its 18A manufacturing tech now delivers logic density on par with TSMC's N3E process—the standard used in advanced chipmaking today. But TSMC's newer nodes, like N3P and N2, are still denser. Panther Lake is Intel's first chip to ship with RibbonFET transistors and backside power, both key breakthroughs for future performance. Yields for the 18A compute die have reached about 80%.

• Intel 18A compute logic matches TSMC N3E density
• TSMC N3P/N2 still denser than Intel 18A
• First use of RibbonFET and PowerVia in a shipping Intel chip
• Panther Lake CPU cores are incremental updates, not major redesigns
• 18A compute die shows about 80% manufacturing yield