Inside Intel’s Hail Mary to regain chip dominance

Everyone entering factories must wear a bunny suit, and dress – or dress – in a clean room. The use of cosmetics, hair products, perfumes, cologne and any spray products is prohibited. There is a hierarchy in mining between workers: there are those who work with copper, and those who do not. Brass people wear orange suits, not white, and must suit up and undress in their clean room.

The Intel worker who helped me get dressed proudly told me that he had done the same for two US presidents: Obama, who visited Fab 42, and Biden, who visited Fab 52 when it was under construction. As of late September, Trump had not yet visited, although Corey Pforzheimer, an Intel spokesman, said: “We eagerly welcome President Trump to see the latest in groundbreaking semiconductor R&D and manufacturing in the United States.”

The workers moving around don’t so much pull levers and grind manufacturing cogs as they quietly operate robots. They stand in front of (sterile) computer terminals while containers called front-opening unified pods, or FOUPs, zip through a maze of automated tracks. The rows of equipment seem endless. The floor below was reinforced, and then reinforced again, because the smallest tremor could destroy an entire stack of chips.

The facility’s lithography department is bathed in an eerie glow, turning our white suits neon green and those in copper suits pink. Intel asked luxury tourists not to share the names of its suppliers, except for one: ASML, the Dutch manufacturer of the world’s most advanced lithography machines. WIRED saw two massive ASML Twinscan machines that appeared to be in operation. The floor next to them was marked with tape for two more people.

Intel has not yet publicly announced how many semiconductors it expects to produce or successfully manufacture at its Fab 52 per year. For now, chips produced there will be used in consumer devices such as laptops. But what Intel really needs is the same thing the entire industry is seeking: a superfast customer, a giant data center deal, someone looking to spend billions to get an edge in AI. whale.

Design repair

Intel’s Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest chips will be made using a manufacturing process that discards decades of proven design techniques in favor of two new technologies the company calls RibbonFET and PowerVia. RibbonFet is a structure of transistors, stacked in a way that allows for greater density, while PowerVia moves the power connections from the top of the silicon stacks in the chip to the bottom.

Intel began working on the new design approach in 2021, and early tests showed that RibbonFet and PowerVia led to Performance gains. Reports suggest these new chips will be used as well 30 percent less energy From the previous generation.