Intel's foundry business has secured its first external customer for the Intel 4 manufacturing process, and that customer is cybersecurity hardware giant Fortinet. The partnership will see Intel co-develop and manufacture Fortinet's next-generation Security Processor 6 (SP6), the custom ASIC that powers the company's FortiGate firewall appliances. The deal marks a significant milestone for Intel 4, a node that previously produced only Intel's own products.

What You Need to Know

Intel 4 is the company's first EUV-based process node, currently used for Meteor Lake CPU tiles. Fortinet, the firewall market leader by unit share, will move from a monolithic 7nm Arm SoC to a chiplet architecture for its SP6 ASIC. No production timeline has been set, but the announcement aligns with Intel's expected foundry customer commitments in the second half of 2026. The agreement is described as a starting point for broader collaboration.

A Chiplet-Based Security Processor

The SP6 represents a fundamental shift in Fortinet's silicon strategy. The current SP5, launched in 2023, is a monolithic 7nm Arm-based SoC used across entry-level and mid-range FortiGate appliances. The new SP6 will adopt a disaggregated chiplet design, drawing on Intel's expertise in advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration. That approach allows Fortinet to tailor compute blocks for both AI inference and cost-sensitive networking workloads within a single package.

  • Flexible integration: Chiplets enable Fortinet to combine AI accelerators and networking logic on one substrate.
  • Cost efficiency: Disaggregation allows each die to be manufactured on the optimal node, reducing overall expense.
  • Scalability: The modular design can span FortiGate product tiers from low-end to high-end without full redesigns.

Intel 4’s Foundry Milestone

Intel 4 entered high-volume manufacturing at Fab 34 in Ireland in September 2023, becoming Intel's first node to use EUV lithography. Until now, the process had been reserved exclusively for Intel's own products, notably the compute tile in Meteor Lake Core Ultra CPUs. The Fortinet deal makes SP6 the first named external chip to be built on Intel 4, a crucial validation for Intel's foundry turnaround. Intel CFO David Zinsner said in March that the company was seeing inbound interest in its enhanced 18A-P node as yields improved, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan has indicated that foundry commitments are expected in the second half of 2026. The SP6 announcement falls within that same window.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, Intel emphasized that the SP6 work reflects plans laid out years ago to support custom networking ASIC workloads on Intel 4. The node did not appear in Intel's 2024 annual report among nodes listed for external foundry customers, which included 18A, Intel 3, Intel 7, Intel 16, and a 12nm process. That omission made the Fortinet win all the more significant for Intel's external foundry narrative.

Fortinet’s Silicon Strategy

Fortinet ships its own ASICs across its entire FortiGate line, and SP6 extends a program now in its sixth generation. The company commands a 48% share of the firewall appliance market by units shipped, according to IDC data from early 2023. That volume gives Intel a steady, high-volume customer for Intel 4 even if the partnership lacks the marquee prestige of a major AI chip deal. The companies described the agreement as a starting point, with further collaboration on chip technology and manufacturing under discussion beyond SP6.

Why This Matters

The Fortinet deal provides Intel with a tangible proof point for its foundry strategy on a node that had previously been off-limits to external customers. For Fortinet, the move to a chiplet ASIC on Intel 4 enables greater design flexibility and potential cost savings as it defends its firewall market lead. The partnership also signals that Intel's non-leading-edge nodes can attract meaningful volume from specialized markets like cybersecurity. If the collaboration extends beyond SP6, it could create a long-term anchor for Intel 4 production and bolster Intel's credibility as a foundry partner for networking and security chips.