Keep in mind the timeframe, though. Nova Lake is due out in 2026. I assume mid or late in the year, but I could be wrong about that. The Nova Lake CPU tiles are pretty much the only ones it seems like would need/warrant N2. So, this is really confounding, especially if Panther Lake ships on time, using 18A, and has similar-size tiles to the CPU tiles in Nova Lake.
Could we be seeing something like a repeat of Meteor Lake? So, like maybe Intel couldn't get clock frequencies high enough on 18A and that's why it's viable for Panther lake but not Nova Lake? However, instead of simply cancelling it, they're moving Nova Lake to TSMC N2?
Otherwise, I think it's very worrying news for their server CPUs.