It will take until late 2021 until Intel will be on par technologically with competitors, Intel CFO George Davis told investors at the Morgan Stanley conference. The tech parity will coincide with Intel’s launch of 7nm chips, which presumably will be comparable with TSMC’s 5nm technology.
Intel does expect to regain process technology leadership when it delivers 5nm chips, Davis said. The company hasn’t announced a launch date for that node, but a two-year cadence would put it in late 2023. TSMC will have been manufacturing 3nm chips for at least a year by then, but it’s unknown how these would compare to Intel’s 5nm chips. Intel would need to scale more aggressively than TSMC to regain technology leadership at 5nm, something that didn’t work out well at the 10nm node, which was delayed several years.