According to the latest report, Intel has now shared some news about its next-generation Intel 4 process. According to reports, the process will be used for products released in 2023, and it is Intel’s first process to use EUV.
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The Intel 4 will first be used in Intel’s upcoming Meteor Lake processors, which will be part of Intel’s 14th-generation Core family. In addition to significant advancements in process technology, Meteor Lake will be Intel’s first tile/chipset-based client CPU, using tile modules such as I/O cores, CPU cores, and GPU cores.
According to data released by Intel, the Intel 4’s fin pitch has dropped to 30 nanometers, which is 0.88 times the size of the Intel 7’s 34-nanometer pitch. Likewise, the spacing between the contact gates is now 50nm, down from 60nm previously. Intel claims that the Intel 4 is twice as dense as the Intel 7, or more specifically, the size of the transistors has been cut in half.
Additionally, the new process makes significant changes to the metal layers. Intel replaced copper with cobalt at the bottom layer of its Intel 7 process, which the company believes is necessary for transistor longevity reasons. However, cobalt is not that great from a performance standpoint and has long been suspected to be one of the main stumbling blocks for Intel’s Intel 7.
For Intel 4, Intel is still using cobalt, but now they are not using pure cobalt, but so-called enhanced copper (eCu), or copper-clad cobalt. In terms of performance, it is reported that the frequency of Intel 4 is 21.5% higher than that of Intel 7 under the same power of 0.65v. At 0.85v and above, the isopower gain is close to 10%.
Intel says the Intel 4 has more power-efficiency gains. At the same frequency (around 2.1 GHz), the Intel 4 consumes 40% less power diminishing returns as frequency increases.
