Intel officially launched Intel Foundry yesterday, its new systems foundry “for the AI era,” and on the heels of that announcement comes new statements from Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger that can confirm the semiconductor manufacturer is open to making chips for everyone—including some of Intel’s biggest competitors. Those would include AMD, whose Ryzen chips, built by TSMC, continue to battle it out with Core CPUs, as well as NVIDIA, whose stock prices are jumping again thanks to a positive Q4 fiscal 2024 earnings report.
An editor with Tom’s Hardware noted/asked:
- “Intel will now offer its process nodes to some of its competitors, and there may be situations wherein your product teams are competing directly with competitors that are enabled by your crown jewels.”
- “How do you plan to navigate those types of situations and maybe soothe ruffled feathers on your product teams?”
Gelsinger responded:
- “…we’ll have a setup separate legal entity for Intel foundry this year…the foundry team’s objective is simple: Fill. The. Fabs. Deliver to the broadest set of customers on the planet.”
- “We hope that that includes Jensen (Nvidia), Christiano (Qualcomm), and Sundar (Google), and you heard today it includes Satya (Microsoft), and I even hope that includes Lisa (AMD) going forward.”
- “…we want to be the foundry for the world, and if we’re going to be the Western foundry at scale, we can’t be discriminating about who’s participating in that.”
- “…I want my foundry to be used by everybody. Period. We want to help build Nvidia chips, and AMD chips, and TPU chips for Google, and inference chips for Amazon. Period. We want to help them and give them the most powerful, performant, and efficient technologies for them to build their systems. Period. Full stop.”
Intel Foundry on some of its process technologies, including Intel 14A, which is expected to be ready by 2027:
…Intel 3-T….is optimized with through-silicon vias for 3D advanced packaging designs and will soon reach manufacturing readiness. Also highlighted are mature process nodes, including new 12 nanometer nodes expected through the joint development with UMC announced last month. These evolutions are designed to enable customers to develop and deliver products tailored to their specific needs. Intel Foundry plans a new node every two years and node evolutions along the way, giving customers a path to continuously evolve their offerings on Intel’s leading process technology.
Intel also announced the addition of Intel Foundry FCBGA 2D+ to its comprehensive suite of ASAT offerings, which already include FCBGA 2D, EMIB, Foveros and Foveros Direct.