Intel’s 18A rumors meet a thermal brick wall says SemiWiki

[MKWVentures]

BSPD is an HPC technology for all the reasons Ian pointed out above and also because it costs more and requires new design techniques. The mobile guys do not want BSPD, they don't want the cost, it doesn't align with their needs and they don't know how to design for it.. TSMC has 2nm without BSPD, then A16 with BSPD (that I hear will be pretty much an NVIDIA node), then A14 without BSPD and then an A14 follow on with BSPD. The mobile guys will use 2nm and A14 and the HPC guys will use A16 and the A14 follow on process. I have heard Intel may offer a 14A version without BSPD, if so that would make them a mobile option once it comes out.

When you first mentioned this a while ago, it was very eye opening and explained a lot of what i was hearing on 18A. Thanks for the inputs

 

[IanD]

BSPD is an HPC technology for all the reasons Ian pointed out above and also because it costs more and requires new design techniques. The mobile guys do not want BSPD, they don't want the cost, it doesn't align with their needs and they don't know how to design for it.. TSMC has 2nm without BSPD, then A16 with BSPD (that I hear will be pretty much an NVIDIA node), then A14 without BSPD and then an A14 follow on with BSPD. The mobile guys will use 2nm and A14 and the HPC guys will use A16 and the A14 follow on process. I have heard Intel may offer a 14A version without BSPD, if so that would make them a mobile option once it comes out.

Agreed 100%, it's exactly what I've been saying. The problem for Intel is that quite apart from the fact that they've publicly nailed their colors to the BSPD mast, if they did a FSPD variant of 14A it would be late to market compared to TSMC, have much poorer IP support, and be more expensive due to generally higher wafer costs and lower yield at Intel -- especially since TSMC will be *at least* a year further down the yield curve at any point in time.

Given that TTM and KGD cost and IP support are probably the three most critical things for mobile and Intel would be at a disadvantage in all of these, it's difficult to see how they could be successful. Which given the existing uncertainly about how successful Intel will be in the foundry market even with their BSPD advantage (and whether they'll carry on investing enough to make this happen big-time), you'd think that would make it *very* difficult for Intel management to make the business case for doing 14A FSPD -- plus having to find the extra resources to develop/qualify a quite different process.

If Intel were going to do FSPD they should have already done the process development/qualification in parallel with BSPD 14A, but they didn't so they've missed the boat -- at least, for this node.

 

[Xebec]

Not very scientific, but I found a couple of reviews using a common laptop chassis to try to compare 18A and N3B thermal performance (Panther Lake and Arrow Lake-H) respectively. Both tests used Cinebench in a loop to determine what power level the CPU could stay at, for a given fan profile. Note the Cinebench performance numbers can't be directly compared as they used different versions, but the drop in "best run" vs "10 minutes of heat soaked" may be useful.

Power at Temp (measured by the CPU software) with fans set to performance:
- Arrow Lake-H can sustain about 35W ("high -80's C")
- Panther Lake can sustain 30W (77C) or 44W (92C) with fans set to performance with keyboard attached

Power/Temp in silent/whisper mode:
- Arrow-Lake H "down to about 20W at low 70's C"
- Panther Lake 20W at 67C

Performance - best run vs "10 minutes heat soaked" - Cinebench multithreaded, fans in performance mode.
- Arrow Lake-H went from 17348 to 15627 for CB 2023, a drop of about 10%
- Panther Lake went from 1142 to 1103 for CB 2024, a drop of 4%.

Source 1: Panther Lake Asus Zenbook Duo: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asus-zenbook-duo-ux8407/10.html
Source 2: Arrow Lake-H Asus Zenbook Duo: https://www.ultrabookreview.com/70717-asus-zenbook-duo-review-2025/

Take-aways: Using a similar (same?) laptop chassis, Panther Lake is losing less performance when going from 'first run' to 'running for 10 minutes' in a heat soak benchmark. Power @ Temp also appears to be about equal for both chips, indicating the thermal resistance of an 18A chip might not be significantly worse than a N3B variant.

Full caveats that these are different architectures, and Intel's Panther Lake is a HUGE improvement in efficiency vs. prior Intel and current AMD offerings.

P.S. I think Arrow Lake-H is a bit of a better foil as Lunar Lake just has too few cores for an 'even' comparison in thermals and performance. Also, without seeing teardowns - ASUS could have changed it's cooling solution between the Arrow Lake-H and Panther Lake laptops, so this is definitely not a 'great' comparison.