Intel is 'all-in' with 14A node, custom Xeon x86 CPU for NVIDIA, RTX GPU tile for laptops

Intel has said that it's making great progress on its next-gen Intel 14A node, as well as talking about its recent partnership with NVIDIA, and what we'll see in the future regarding CPUs and GPUs.

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At the recent 2025 RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media and Telecommunications Conference, Intel VP John Pitzer discussed the upcoming Intel 14A process node, and how it will be an important milestone for the company, as well as its NVIDIA partnership, and more.

Intel 18A will be found inside of chips later this year with Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 300 "Panther Lake" CPUs with ramping in early 2026, but after that we'll see Intel 14A which will feature two huge innovations: second-gen GAA (Gate-All-Around) transistor design, and the second is optimized backside power delivery.

John Pitzer - Intel VP of Corporate Planning & Investor Relations, said: "We are all in on the development of Intel 14A and we're feeling good with the engagements we're having with external customers. And I do think it's important to point out that 14A is in many ways a very different node from an external perspective than Intel 18A".

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He continued: "On 18A, in the definitional phase, we were only engaging with Intel products. It really wasn't until the development phase that we actually started soliciting feedback from external customers, which meant that a lot of the choices we made at the transistor level was really to optimize for the internal product groups instead of external customers. In addition, it was really our first foray into understanding PDKs, process development kits, and we had some growing pains on getting our PDKs to be true industry standard".

"I think the big difference on Intel 14A is that we are in the definitional phase, engaging with external customers. What that means is we're getting earlier, more, and better feedback on how we're doing from those external customers at 14A than we did at 18A, and our PDK maturity is much better. We are now bringing to market industry-standard PDKs, both of which help tremendously. I'd also point out that at 18A, we were changing from FinFET to gate-all-around. We were also adding backside power. We were making major changes. At 14A, it's a second-generation gate-all-around. It's a second-generation backside power".

"We have stated and been very clear. If you look at where we are today on 14A on performance and yield versus a similar point of development on 18A, we're significantly further ahead on 14A. We're feeling very good about 14A. We are all in on 14A".

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On the Intel and NVIDIA partnership, John said that we'll see Intel fabbing a new custom Xeon CPU for NVIDIA, which will take advantage of the NVLink Fusion interconnect system that was developed by NVIDIA. This will allow Intel's x86 CPUs to use NVIDIA's high-bandwidth interconnect technologies, with Arm's Neoverse platform also using NVLink Fusion, which was announced at SC25.

On the consumer side of things regarding the $5 billion partnership between Intel and NVIDIA is that Intel will be making the SoC, but the RTX GPU tile will be sold to the customer by NVIDIA only. What this means is that we'll see a range of different configurations of the RTX GPU tile from Intel OEMs and its partners.

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John added: "Yeah, I think we're going to continue to pursue our own internal strategy, just like on the data center side, NVIDIA will continue to pursue their own strategy with Grace and Vera. You know, time will tell as to what portion of the market this will actually cover, but we are going to be able to bring, I think, a new level of performance on graphics to a notebook-type class PC, clearly initially targeting the high-end, but there are aspirations that we can broaden the market further as we develop this relationship more".

"If you look at the client part, I think that clearly we have the opportunity to build really a new class of PC parts that we're pretty excited about, and the way that that relationship is going to work is, you know, they will provide the graphics tile through bailment, which means that the customer will actually pay them for the graphics tile, but we will be responsible for integrating that graphics tile with our CPU and bringing it to market".