Article 2: The Art of the Impossible: Forging a Path Back to Leadership—an Intel story.
In our new series, "The Crucible of Creation" by Michael Apemah
After years of delays and a crisis of culture, Intel was on its knees. To fix the broken machine, a new philosophy and new leadership were required. The crusade began under Dr. Ann Kelleher, a manufacturing veteran who famously declared that the laws of physics aren’t different for Intel. It was a clear signal: the era of excuses was over.
This new era was defined by Pat Gelsinger’s audacious rallying cry: “Five nodes in four years.” To the outside world, it sounded like marketing bravado. To those of us who understood the brutal physics of semiconductor manufacturing, it sounded insane. It was a declaration that Intel was going to compress a decade’s worth of innovation into less than half the time.
The Arsenal: RibbonFET and PowerVia
To achieve the impossible, Intel needed new weapons. The ultimate goal was 18A, the node designed to leapfrog TSMC’s 2nm (N2) process. This wasn’t just a smaller version of the old technology; it was a fundamental reinvention of the transistor itself, built on two revolutionary technologies:
RibbonFET (The 3D Superhighway): Intel’s version of Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology, where the gate wraps around all four sides of stacked “nanoribbons,” giving it absolute control over the flow of electricity to reduce power leakage.
PowerVia (The Under-Floor Power Grid): A revolutionary “backside power delivery” system that moves the entire power grid to the back of the silicon wafer. This frees up the front side for a cleaner, more efficient data network, like building a city with a dedicated underground subway for power, leaving the streets clear for data traffic.
TSMC’s N2 node will also use GAA, but Intel’s aggressive, simultaneous introduction of both RibbonFET and PowerVia on 18A is the high-stakes gamble designed to deliver a knockout blow.
The New Philosophy: Discipline, Integration, and a New General
New weapons were not enough. The very structure of the army had to change. Ann Kelleher began the difficult work, instituting a move to modular design to prevent single flaws from derailing an entire node. But even as she brought the company close to the “5N4Y” finish line, yields remained a challenge. To cross that final, brutal mile, a new structure and a new leader were needed, especially under the new, organization-flattening mandate of CEO Lip-Bu Tan.
This brings us to the current era under Dr. Naga Chandrasekaran, a foundry veteran hired from Micron to become the new Chief Manufacturing Officer. In a decisive move, the previously separate divisions—Foundry Technology Development (Ann’s old group), Foundry Manufacturing (led by Keyvan Esfarjani and then Naga), and even Intel Foundry Services (led by Kevin O’Buckley)—were all merged into a single, monolithic business unit: Foundry Technology and Manufacturing (FTM). Naga was put in command of the entire operation.
From an analyst’s perspective, this is the most significant structural change at Intel in a generation. It is a direct “me too” move, mimicking the highly successful, integrated R&D-to-manufacturing-to-customer model of TSMC. The goal is to shatter the internal silos that created so many past failures and present a single, accountable face to the world.
Under this new, unified command, Naga is tasked with executing a new philosophy of aggressive yield discipline. As we discussed, this new approach targets healthy yields much earlier in the development cycle, with a relentless focus on maximizing performance from every millimeter of the wafer. It is the operational embodiment of Ann Kelleher’s “no excuses” mantra.
The Humbling Necessity: Using Your Rival’s Forge
Perhaps the most telling sign of the new Intel is its pragmatism. While the grand plan is to restore its own manufacturing leadership, the company implemented a “Product Risk Management” strategy to ensure it would never again be left without competitive products.
This is why we see a once-unthinkable reality: Intel’s own advanced client chips, like the GPU tile in Meteor Lake and the compute tile in Arrow Lake, are being built by its chief rival, TSMC. It is a humbling but brilliant move. It leverages TSMC’s proven process to keep Intel’s products competitive in the market today, buying precious time for Naga’s new, unified machine to master 18A for tomorrow.
The fallen king is not just trying to rebuild his old castle. He has redesigned the army, appointed a new general, and is even striking necessary alliances with his enemies. The stage is now set for the ultimate test: the launch of the first products from this new machine, starting with the one that carries the hopes of the entire empire, Panther Lake.