Intel's reported 3nm chip deferment hints at a delay to Arrow Lake CPUs

pcgamer.com:

Could Intel's next-gen Arrow CPU family be delayed to 2025? That's the latest speculation born of Taiwan. 

More specifically, Digitimes(opens in new tab) (via Techpowerup(opens in new tab)) reckons Intel has pushed out its orders for 3nm wafers from TSMC to the final quarter of of 2024. Those 3nm wafers are supposed to contain the graphics tiles for the future CPUs sporting the Arrow Lake architecture.

Realistically, if TSMC doesn't start fabbing the 3nm iGPU tiles until the end of 2024, and Arrow Lake depends on those same 3nm GPU tiles, there's little chance of actual Arrow Lake CPU availability until well into 2025. Meanwhile, Arrow Lake currently appears on Intel's public roadmaps for 2024, as do 3nm GPU tiles sourced from TSMC.

And so the expectation is now that Arrow Lake is to be delayed until 2025. The catch is that Intel doesn't necessarily need to source 3nm GPU tiles for Arrow Lake. Could it just use 5nm tiles? Either way, if the 3nm order has indeed been delayed, something has definitely changed compared with Intel's official roadmap. Which begs the question, why has that 3nm order been pushed out?

Of course, Intel isn't saying anything about a delay to Arrow Lake. At its most recent earnings call in January, the company doubled down on its commitment to begin manufacturing its first chips using Intel 4 silicon later this year(opens in new tab).

Those early Intel 4 models will be Meteor Lake CPUs, thought to be closely related to Arrow Lake. Indeed, Arrow Lake CPU tiles are set to be produced on essentially the same internal Intel production node as Meteor Lake.

However, where Meteor Lake runs 5nm TSMC silicon for its GPU tile, Arrow Lake has been publicly listed as upgrading that to 3nm. It's currently