According to Intel, yields are currently improving by 7 or 8 percent per month. But this may be based on significantly lower initial yields – last summer’s report showed that only 18 percent of the chips coming from 10A production lines were meeting Intel’s requirements at the time. Intel estimates there will be a substantial increase in supply over the next few months which will help ease the shortage.
“I believe the first quarter is in the trough,” Zinsner said. “We will improve supply in the second quarter.”
Intel is selling everything it can make
When Intel can start making enough chips to meet demand, it will help improve the company’s earnings reports.
“We delivered [our Q4 2025] The results came despite supply constraints, which meaningfully limited our ability to capture all the power in our underwriting markets, Tan said. We are working aggressively to address this and better support our customers’ needs going forward.
Intel has been hinting for some time that it is essentially selling all the chips it can get. Intel investor relations VP John Pitzer said last month that Intel would sell more of both its Lunar Lake and Aero Lake Core Ultra Series 2 chips for consumers, as well as its Granite Rapids chips for data centers, if it could get more of them.
As Intel looks to improve its position in the short term, the company also says it is still making progress on its future manufacturing nodes, including various versions of the 18A process and the upcoming 14A process. Intel is working to engage “potential external customers” who would use the 14A process to make their own chips. If these third parties decide to use Intel’s manufacturing facilities, Intel expects to learn about it “starting in the second half of this year and extending through the first half of 2027”, and then build manufacturing capacity depending on the number of external customers it receives.
In terms of chip design, Intel also expects its first next-generation Nova Lake chips to be ready in “late 2026.” We don’t know much about Nova Lake yet, but it should be Intel’s next architecture covering both desktop and laptop processors, whereas the Panther Lake chips are primarily for laptops. At least part of the chip will also be manufactured using the 18A process.
<a href