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Intel unveiled its Intel Foundry business today which will count on external customers to its multi-billion-dollar chip manufacturing plants.
Before a crowd of more than 1,000 people, Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO, said at the press event in San Jose, California, that the contract manufacturing business will propel the company into the forefront of making AI chips for the world.
Intel’s Foundry Direct Connect event featured special guests such as U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Arm CEO Rene Haas and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The latter is hoping to raise trillions of dollars for AI chip manufacturing. On Intel’s part, this foundry move represents a bet of billions of dollars, and it’s the biggest wager that Gelsinger has made since he returned to Intel as CEO three years ago.
The Intel Foundry initiative aims to redefine technology, resilience, and sustainability, offering a comprehensive solution for chip designers looking to harness the power of AI.
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“This is a key moment in the progression at the Intel foundry,” Gelsinger said in an interview with VentureBeat (full interview here). “We view the opportunity to position what we call the Intel Systems Foundry. A systems foundry, we believe, is a significant move from just being a wafer provider, to delivering a whole range of technologies – wafers, packaging, systems and software capability. With the surge of AI we see that the capabilities that Intel brings to the table are significantly greater than just the wafer foundry as that category has been defined today.”
The event showcased an extended process roadmap, unveiling Intel 14A process technology and specialized node evolutions. Additionally, Intel Foundry introduced Advanced System Assembly and Test (ASAT) capabilities to propel customers toward their AI ambitions.
Craig Orr, vice president of marketing and platforms at Intel, said in a press briefing that he was excited to have such broad support from across the industry.
“The reason I think there is such broad support and excitement for us across the industry is because we’re doing something different and we’re doing something big,” Orr said. “I think Intel’s IDM (integrated device manufacturer) 2.0 strategy was to bring out the best in the basic technology and bring out the best in the product groups and design and do that in a way that’s separate, but together.”
Orr added, “I think both of those things as continuing to get more competitive. It’s just that this Intel Foundry umbrella helps us to become more competitive as a foundry ourselves. It forces it forces us to be able to do really good benchmarking and be competitive across those key metrics. It also helps our customers trust us because they know that their data.”
Gelsinger said, “This is creating an unprecedented opportunity for the world’s most innovative chip designers and for Intel Foundry, the world’s first systems foundry for the AI era. Together, we can create new markets and revolutionize how the world uses technology to improve people’s lives.”
The extended process technology roadmap includes Intel 14A, a key addition to the ambitious five-nodes-in-four-years (5N4Y) plan. Normally, it takes a couple of years to make the transition from an existing manufacturing node to a new one. But Intel set up a plan to make five such leaps in four years.
“We’re unveiling our Intel Foundry brand, which is putting together all of the technology development, manufacturing and supply chain and the Intel Foundry services folks under one umbrella as a foundry to serve internal and external customers equally,” Orr said.
Orr added, “We’re not only just going to bring a basic foundry offering. We’re going to couple that with resilient and sustainable supply, and all of the systems-on-chip capabilities that we have as Intel, from our leadership doing this for many, many years. And as you go up that pyramid that you see the differentiation we bring becomes larger and larger.”
14A node
![Intel is doubling down on chip manufacturing investments.](https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/intel-foundry-8.jpg?w=800&resize=1200%2C610&strip=all")
The roadmap outlines evolutions for manufacturing process technologies that are named Intel 3, Intel 18A process technologies. Noteworthy is Intel 3-T, optimized for 3D advanced packaging designs, reaching manufacturing readiness. Intel aims to regain process leadership with Intel 18A in 2025.
That means that, all things being equal when it comes to chip design, Intel’s chips will have a manufacturing advantage in terms of cost, efficiency, density and speed.
“With 18A we plan we plan to reestablish our process leadership from 2025 [onward]. And we will extend that further with 14A and this new roadmap we’ve announced,” Orr said.
The 14A node will bring the first use of high-end UV tools to build more intricate patterns on chips.
Orr said, “We have to keep advancing Moore’s Law over time. We have to give it a little boost with the packaging technologies that we have. And all of that has to be supported by a broad design ecosystem. But if you look at the rate of change for AI, it’s starting to grow exponentially. So these improvements that we’re having from Moore’s law, we have to add even more to that if we want to get to a point where we can bring AI everywhere in a sustainable fashion.”
Intel’s job is to optimize everything together into the most efficient system that it can. That’s what Intel has done when it has been at its best, like when it build all of the components needed for a more efficient laptop or an efficient server.
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