Intel Corp. executives today detailed a new business vision for its foundry unit, freshly renamed Intel Foundry, and revealed the most advanced chip manufacturing process on the company’s technology roadmap. The process will be powered by High NA EUV machines from ASML Holdings NV. The machines, which are about the size of a double-decker bus and cost $350 million apiece, can produce the smallest transistor of any commercially available lithography system. ASML’s first-ever High NA EUV unit arrived at an Intel fab in Oregon late last year. The chipmaker detailed its plans for Intel Foundry today at Foundry Direct Connect, its first-ever event dedicated to contract processor manufacturing. Alongside a keynote by Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger (pictured), the conference featured remote appearances by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella CEO and, due later today in person, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Executives from other major chip industry players such as Broadcom Inc. were in attendance as well. Intel detailed that its foundry business has so far won chip production deals with a total lifetime value of more than $15 billion. At least one of those contracts, a deal to make an unspecified custom chip for Microsoft, will leverage the upcoming Intel 18A manufacturing process. This process will make transistors based on the gate-all-around design that Intel’s top rivals are currently also in the process of adopting. “This is a renaming, a reorganization, a new organizational model,” Gelsinger said onstage. “A rebuilding of Intel.” Until today, the gate-all-around Intel 18A node was the most advanced manufacturing process on the company’s publicly disclosed development roadmap. At Foundry Direct Connect this morning, the chip giant detailed an even more advanced process called Intel 14A. It’s expected to come online by 2027 and will use ASML’s $350 million High NA EUV machines to carve transistors into chips.
Full story : Intel unveils Intel Foundry with eye to AI and next-gen lithography manufacturing.
