Intel CEO bullish about chip roadmap and confirms Arrow Lake CPUs for this year as share price plummets 12%

As we write these words, Intel's share price has dipped by over 12% today following the company's latest financial results. However, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is conspicuously bullish about the company's products and roadmaps, doubling down on a range of promises and confirming that we'll see Arrow Lake CPUs later this year.

Intel's results for the final quarter of last year, with revenues up by about 10% over the same quarter in 2022, actually exceeded expectations. But it was the company's unexpectedly pessimistic published outlook for the first quarter of 2024 that had investors running for the hills.

Arguably both more interesting and more relevant to pricing Intel's shares accurately were the things Gelsinger said about Intel's product road map.

First, he confirmed that Intel's new server chips being produced on its latest Intel 3 node are «on track». He also stuck to the promises Intel has already made regarding future CPU products and production nodes. 

«We are even more excited about breaking into the Angstrom era with Intel 20A and Intel 18A. We are first in the industry to have incorporated both gate-all-around and backside power delivery in a single process node, the latter and expected two years ahead of our competition.

Arrow Lake, our lead Intel 20A vehicle, will launch this year. Intel 18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in second half '24, completing our five nodes and four-year journey and bringing us back to process leadership,» Gelsinger said.

So, that's Arrow Lake, Intel's next major desktop CPU architecture, out later this year on the 20A node. We'll be impressed if that happens given that Intel has barely managed to ship a few laptop Meteor Lake CPUs using its new Intel 4 node thus far–and those Meteor Lake chips barely use any Intel 4 silicon, most of the chiplets inside the package are made by TSMC.

Looking even further out, Gelsinger had more details. «I am pleased to say that Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for