Intel is increasing its reliance on erstwhile rival TSMC to sprint sales, while its ultimate goal is to regain world leadership in manufacturing scale and chip process technology.

According to a survey of three industry analysts, Intel will join Apple in commissioning TSMC, which will mass-produce the latest process this year, to manufacture 3nm chips. Analysts noted that Intel and Apple are likely to be TSMC's only customers in mass production of this state-of-the-art node.

At Intel's investor conference in mid-February, CEO Pat Gelsinger reiterated the company's commitment to "recapture leadership in the chip business." Gelsinger, who has been at the helm of Intel for a year, said the company will "go five nodes in four years;" after nanometers, chip processes will progress to angstroms.

Intel's leap depends on TSMC's help on the 5nm and 3nm nodes. One of the challenges is combining TSMC's chiplets with other chiplets made in-house by Intel, like Ponte Vecchio, into a single device. This will involve matching chiplets made on TSMC's 5nm process with Intel's own silicon, using Intel's new packaging technologies, including Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) and Foveros.

It's also part of a trend in chip structures moving from planar to 3D; 3D chips dramatically expand the volume of semiconductor components to increase transistor density, ideally allowing Intel's Moore's Law to last decades. Intel expects that by 2030, the number of transistors that can be integrated into a single chip will reach 1 trillion.

Intel's plans will rely heavily on ASML's high numerical aperture (NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment. Intel is an ASML EUV business customer -- currently only the first of a handful of companies, including TSMC, Samsung, Intel and Micron, to adopt high-NA devices. TSMC's foundry rivals Samsung and Intel are pioneering the use of gate-all-around (GAA) 3D transistor architecture combined with EUV, hoping to surpass the FinFET transistor architecture and EUV expertise that TSMC has been using to maintain sales and process technology leadership.