One interesting aspect of the recent product showcases by Intel is that the foundations of Panther Lake and 18A were laid down by former CEO Pat Gelsinger.
Intel’s New Announcements Reflect Former CEO Pat Gelsinger’s Vision for Foundry Dominance
The announcements made by Intel over the past week proved to be highly optimistic regarding the company’s future, particularly for its foundry division. We took a deep dive into Panther Lake, Intel’s first 18A-based product, along with Clearwater Forest Xeon CPUs and an update on the company’s Fab 52 in Arizona. Team Blue was hyping up the announcements following Tech Tour 2025, and the official unveiling clearly showed us that the firm has found the direction it wants to go. However, there’s another important aspect to both PTL and 18A, which is that these products were what former CEO Pat Gelsinger was optimistic about, and were intended to steer the momentum in the firm’s favour.
Let’s go a bit down the history lane. Gelsinger took Intel’s office back in 2021, and by then, the firm had no clear foundry strategy. The former CEO introduced initiatives such as ‘5N4Y’ and ‘IDM 2.0’ to ensure that Intel Foundry becomes the dominant entity in the semiconductor industry. More particularly, Gelsinger had made several efforts to turn around the foundry division, but the 18A node was a project on which he was personally the most optimistic. In an interview with Stratechery, he claimed that all of his confidence was in the 18A node.
I’m now betting all of our products on 18A. We’re giving you more and more evidence to eliminate the skepticism, give you facts … transistors don’t lie.
We had a candy store of ideas … PowerVia probably the big one there … they were ready to go, and … given enough capital, enough team, we were able to go quickly into it.
– Former CEO Pat Gelsinger
The idea of utilizing PowerVia (backside power delivery) and RibbonFET is one of the key factors driving 18A’s power efficiency figures, and Gelsinger claimed at the time that the process would easily surpass TSMC’s N3P, with such technologies onboard. There is no doubt that the optimism Intel currently sees around 18A and Panther Lake are one of the ‘efforts’ of the former CEO that have panned out, and while he had a lot of pressure from investors and the media, the IFS never backed out of making 18A a capable product.
Intel’s Pat Gelsinger also expressed excitement around Panther Lake on several occasions, claiming that the product is a derivative of the success with the 18A node. Gelsinger himself delivered Panther Lake samples to Lenovo last year, right around when he exited the office, which means that PTL did become a really refined product, and the performance and power efficiency figures you are witnessing right now were a result of the work done by Pat Gelsinger, and of course, current CEO Lip-Bu Tan and his team. However, there’s definitely an emotional aspect surrounding the recent announcements made by Intel, as Gelsinger’s vision is playing out.
In terms of what to expect from Intel’s current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, we can likely expect the 14A node to be a product heavily influenced under his leadership. On the product side, Nova Lake and its preceding lineups will be attributed to the current CEO. Whether both 18A and Panther Lake have met consumer expectations is something that you will tell us in the comment section below.
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