News Intel's German fab will be most advanced in the world and make 1.5nm chips, CEO say

[Admin]

Intel's CEO expects Magdeburg fab to be the most advanced fab in the world when it comes online.

Intel's German fab will be most advanced in the world and make 1.5nm chips, CEO say : Read more

 

[peachpuff]

Good luck pat

 

[thestryker]

Well it's probably a lot cheaper to load up High-NA machines onto trucks than some combination of ship/truck/train!

It does make sense either way though as the fab moves are to increase capacity and since nodes are lasting longer they can keep the existing fabs churning out chips while spinning up new advanced ones.

 

[br00]

Intel's CEO presenting at the WEF is enough of a slight to drop them entirely, completely disregarding they are failing to design chips to put them at the top in the first place.

 

[phead128]

Intel needs to stop talking and just deliver.

 

[DavidLejdar]

Others are excited as well. Not far from Magdeburg is "Silicon Saxony", and companies like BASF, Linde, and Merck (chemicals and gas for chip manufacturing), Siltronic (wafers), and Trumpf, Süss Microtec, and Zeiss (machinery), as well some academic focus in such regard. That should help quite some, I suppose.

And aside from the 380 hectars for Intel, there are already also 1,127 hectars for a High-tech-park, with direct access to highways, and access to rail and a port.

Additionally, Magdeburg is a nice place. Or at least personally, I wouldn't mind moving there (from Berlin, about 100 miles away).

 

[L0rdrobot]

Allow me to take a sledgehammer to this nonsense.

1) Be aware that Intel FAILED miserably at 10nm chips but now are pumped up to make 1.5nm narrow gated chips in Germany. That's hype.

2) What fabless company is going to bring their chip designs to Intel? None. That is akin to giving a competitor your chip designs. It will never happen. TSMC the most advanced in the world does not design and build its own chips. That's why they get the fabless contract business.

3) The big Intel Push in the USA is to build fab plants in Columbus Ohio is not even a right to work state, so the idea of using retooled automative assembly labour is insane. Fab work is labour intensive, the exact opposite of union labour. The costs have already been estimated to increase the cost of chip fab in Columbus by 40%. Translated that will likely mean the costs will double. Germany is even more expensive. That's the fun part about fab. Labour costs will destroy these crazy pipe dreams.

4) A word about Intel. Intel missed the ENTIRE hand held market which sprung the narrowgated processors. So they are not even in the markets. They lost all of them. Meanwhile and I am sure Tom's could clarify but AMD has surpassed Intel processors both in function and price. Thus Intel is losing its own bread and butter market for CPUs. Intel is playing this like Foxconn... looking for Real Estate Concessions and Tax incentives. Foxconn in Wisconsin is the model of this modern high tech real estate scamism.

5) China the 2000 pound silverback in the room. China is moving so fast in everything from memory which is not narrow gated to the SMIC double immersion 7nm chips and soon 5nm chips in the face of a US Government Nancy Kerrigan Kneecapping foreign trade policy. The US Gov has literally stimulated China to become chip self-sufficient. But that is not how China works.

Self-sufficiency will lead to global domination. They will be patient, build internal markets then they will go global at half the price of their global competitors. By blocking tech and chip purchases from China, the US Gov assures the continued decline of the US semiconductor business. Which BTW only accounts for 2.3% of the US GDP. By destroying US export markets the US Gov has cut off Europe and their so-called allies from selling into the largest global buyer of chips. And that will eventually convert China into the largest maker and seller of chips. Why do you think Apple went to the M1? They feared the US embargoing Intel Chips because the CEO of Intel is full of anti-Chinese rhetoric. He sells the fear and pretends to be the solution. He's akin to an Evangelical TV huckster following the Foxconn model. Intel has been losing marketshare for decades. Why would anybody listen to Intel? They missed the entire handheld market. They promise the world and deliver coleslaw.

 

[phead128]

Allow me to take a sledgehammer to this nonsense.

1) Be aware that Intel FAILED miserably at 10nm chips but now are pumped up to make 1.5nm narrow gated chips in Germany. That's hype.

2) What fabless company is going to bring their chip designs to Intel? None. That is akin to giving a competitor your chip designs. It will never happen. TSMC the most advanced in the world does not design and build its own chips. That's why they get the fabless contract business.

3) The big Intel Push in the USA is to build fab plants in Columbus Ohio is not even a right to work state, so the idea of using retooled automative assembly labour is insane. Fab work is labour intensive, the exact opposite of union labour. The costs have already been estimated to increase the cost of chip fab in Columbus by 40%. Translated that will likely mean the costs will double. Germany is even more expensive. That's the fun part about fab. Labour costs will destroy these crazy pipe dreams.

4) A word about Intel. Intel missed the ENTIRE hand held market which sprung the narrowgated processors. So they are not even in the markets. They lost all of them. Meanwhile and I am sure Tom's could clarify but AMD has surpassed Intel processors both in function and price. Thus Intel is losing its own bread and butter market for CPUs. Intel is playing this like Foxconn... looking for Real Estate Concessions and Tax incentives. Foxconn in Wisconsin is the model of this modern high tech real estate scamism.

5) China the 2000 pound silverback in the room. China is moving so fast in everything from memory which is not narrow gated to the SMIC double immersion 7nm chips and soon 5nm chips in the face of a US Government Nancy Kerrigan Kneecapping foreign trade policy. The US Gov has literally stimulated China to become chip self-sufficient. But that is not how China works.

Self-sufficiency will lead to global domination. They will be patient, build internal markets then they will go global at half the price of their global competitors. By blocking tech and chip purchases from China, the US Gov assures the continued decline of the US semiconductor business. Which BTW only accounts for 2.3% of the US GDP. By destroying US export markets the US Gov has cut off Europe and their so-called allies from selling into the largest global buyer of chips. And that will eventually convert China into the largest maker and seller of chips. Why do you think Apple went to the M1? They feared the US embargoing Intel Chips because the CEO of Intel is full of anti-Chinese rhetoric. He sells the fear and pretends to be the solution. He's akin to an Evangelical TV huckster following the Foxconn model. Intel has been losing marketshare for decades. Why would anybody listen to Intel? They missed the entire handheld market. They promise the world and deliver coleslaw.

You are the man. Thank you for speaking the truth.

 

[CelicaGT]

Less talk, more do, Gelsinger...

 

[kjfatl]

Allow me to take a sledgehammer to this nonsense.

1) Be aware that Intel FAILED miserably at 10nm chips but now are pumped up to make 1.5nm narrow gated chips in Germany. That's hype.

2) What fabless company is going to bring their chip designs to Intel? None. That is akin to giving a competitor your chip designs. It will never happen. TSMC the most advanced in the world does not design and build its own chips. That's why they get the fabless contract business.

3) The big Intel Push in the USA is to build fab plants in Columbus Ohio is not even a right to work state, so the idea of using retooled automative assembly labour is insane. Fab work is labour intensive, the exact opposite of union labour. The costs have already been estimated to increase the cost of chip fab in Columbus by 40%. Translated that will likely mean the costs will double. Germany is even more expensive. That's the fun part about fab. Labour costs will destroy these crazy pipe dreams.

4) A word about Intel. Intel missed the ENTIRE hand held market which sprung the narrowgated processors. So they are not even in the markets. They lost all of them. Meanwhile and I am sure Tom's could clarify but AMD has surpassed Intel processors both in function and price. Thus Intel is losing its own bread and butter market for CPUs. Intel is playing this like Foxconn... looking for Real Estate Concessions and Tax incentives. Foxconn in Wisconsin is the model of this modern high tech real estate scamism.

5) China the 2000 pound silverback in the room. China is moving so fast in everything from memory which is not narrow gated to the SMIC double immersion 7nm chips and soon 5nm chips in the face of a US Government Nancy Kerrigan Kneecapping foreign trade policy. The US Gov has literally stimulated China to become chip self-sufficient. But that is not how China works.

Self-sufficiency will lead to global domination. They will be patient, build internal markets then they will go global at half the price of their global competitors. By blocking tech and chip purchases from China, the US Gov assures the continued decline of the US semiconductor business. Which BTW only accounts for 2.3% of the US GDP. By destroying US export markets the US Gov has cut off Europe and their so-called allies from selling into the largest global buyer of chips. And that will eventually convert China into the largest maker and seller of chips. Why do you think Apple went to the M1? They feared the US embargoing Intel Chips because the CEO of Intel is full of anti-Chinese rhetoric. He sells the fear and pretends to be the solution. He's akin to an Evangelical TV huckster following the Foxconn model. Intel has been losing marketshare for decades. Why would anybody listen to Intel? They missed the entire handheld market. They promise the world and deliver coleslaw.

1) Intel failed miserably at 10nm and nearly sent the company to bankruptcy, offering no competition to TSMC or Samsung. This is correct.

2) What fabless company is going to risk their future by being single sourced to TSMC or Samsung when most of their factories are likely to be bombed by North Korea or China? If you know anything about chip manufacturing, the chip FAB knows almost nothing about the designs they are building.

3) 2 or 3 days ago, Samsung announced that they were in the process of removing all humans from their chip factories, using AI to run the equipment. The few people left will be so highly skilled compensated, unlikely to be interested in the hassle of being part of a labor union. Columbus OH is very close to a number of major engineering universities to draw labor from (OSU, Case Western, Pitt, CMU, Penn State etc.) They are close enough to New York to pull from the talent pool that IBM and Global foundries uses as well. This engineering labor pool is far less expensive than that found in California and Arizona.

4)All signs point to Intel regaining it's manufacturing lead, staying about 1.5 generation in front of TSMC. This will force AMD to use Intel to do it's high end manufacturing if they want to remain a top tier player. TSMC can catch up when Intel is done buying high end machines from AMSL. At this point TSMC has announced that they are delaying their newest processes by at least 1 year. The big players like Apple will use multiple suppliers and leverage them against each other for cost.

5) China is moving to 5nm. Intel is moving to 1.5nm, TSMC is moving to 1.8nm. China may catch up and perhaps dominate in the future, a decade or two from now, but not in the next 5 years.

I have far more confidence in Intel as a chip manufacturer than a system designer.
China's business model of selling below cost to drive the competition our of business then taking over the market won't work here. The will be designing a lot of mid-range to low-end semiconductor parts, particularly those used for automobiles, outside of the navigational computers.

 

[dalek1234]

"Pat says". He does that a lot. Eventually most of it turns out to be BS. I guess I can't blame him since his products don't do any talking.

 

[rluker5]

It's pretty notable how fast Intel is going from DUV to EUV to EUV high NA.
Do I think old EUV will be able to keep up on node improvements with EUV high NA? No, it will likely be comparable to DUV falling behind EUV.

I also like the description DavidLejdar had of the existing tech manufacturing in the area. Plants need good workers and having a lot of good workers already in an area helps with the accepted standards for being one. Also I imagine the equipment and material costs are high enough to make the relatively high labor costs seem insignificant.

Seems like a good place to open up this type of plant.

 

[AHUGH]

Allow me to take a sledgehammer to this nonsense.

1) Be aware that Intel FAILED miserably at 10nm chips but now are pumped up to make 1.5nm narrow gated chips in Germany. That's hype.

2) What fabless company is going to bring their chip designs to Intel? None. That is akin to giving a competitor your chip designs. It will never happen. TSMC the most advanced in the world does not design and build its own chips. That's why they get the fabless contract business.

3) The big Intel Push in the USA is to build fab plants in Columbus Ohio is not even a right to work state, so the idea of using retooled automative assembly labour is insane. Fab work is labour intensive, the exact opposite of union labour. The costs have already been estimated to increase the cost of chip fab in Columbus by 40%. Translated that will likely mean the costs will double. Germany is even more expensive. That's the fun part about fab. Labour costs will destroy these crazy pipe dreams.

4) A word about Intel. Intel missed the ENTIRE hand held market which sprung the narrowgated processors. So they are not even in the markets. They lost all of them. Meanwhile and I am sure Tom's could clarify but AMD has surpassed Intel processors both in function and price. Thus Intel is losing its own bread and butter market for CPUs. Intel is playing this like Foxconn... looking for Real Estate Concessions and Tax incentives. Foxconn in Wisconsin is the model of this modern high tech real estate scamism.

5) China the 2000 pound silverback in the room. China is moving so fast in everything from memory which is not narrow gated to the SMIC double immersion 7nm chips and soon 5nm chips in the face of a US Government Nancy Kerrigan Kneecapping foreign trade policy. The US Gov has literally stimulated China to become chip self-sufficient. But that is not how China works.

Self-sufficiency will lead to global domination. They will be patient, build internal markets then they will go global at half the price of their global competitors. By blocking tech and chip purchases from China, the US Gov assures the continued decline of the US semiconductor business. Which BTW only accounts for 2.3% of the US GDP. By destroying US export markets the US Gov has cut off Europe and their so-called allies from selling into the largest global buyer of chips. And that will eventually convert China into the largest maker and seller of chips. Why do you think Apple went to the M1? They feared the US embargoing Intel Chips because the CEO of Intel is full of anti-Chinese rhetoric. He sells the fear and pretends to be the solution. He's akin to an Evangelical TV huckster following the Foxconn model. Intel has been losing marketshare for decades. Why would anybody listen to Intel? They missed the entire handheld market. They promise the world and deliver coleslaw.

I endorse this message. Well said. You are 100% correct. Annoying how the media simply regurgitate the PR puff without the faintest attempt at critiquing the spin.

 

[subspruce]

This 15A/14A was likely in planning as 3nm before the name change.

 

[waltc3]

Why on Earth would you leave out a date when the FAB is coming online?... Is it ten years from now, 7 years or 5 years from now? When? Very strange omission. Makes me think it's Intel talking about the future again, since it's having a hard time presently. Like it's currently bizarre marketing efforts.

And...the "aid package" in Germany won't be distributed until 2027 according to the linked article. So, construction begins in 2030? Or sooner? I gather that there are no dates, since it's all very much in the planning stage, and no construction date is even projected. I think you would have mentioned it if it was known.

 

[thestryker]

Why on Earth would you leave out a date when the FAB is coming online?... Is it ten years from now, 7 years or 5 years from now? When? Very strange omission. Makes me think it's Intel talking about the future again, since it's having a hard time presently. Like it's currently bizarre marketing efforts.

And...the "aid package" in Germany won't be distributed until 2027 according to the linked article. So, construction begins in 2030? Or sooner? I gather that there are no dates, since it's all very much in the planning stage, and no construction date is even projected. I think you would have mentioned it if it was known.

Last available information construction is supposed to start sometime this year. Intel bought the land in Nov 2022, and their plans were production ready by 2027.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-german-government-agree-magdeburg.html
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/eu-news-2022-release.html
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/27/intel_facing_worker_shortage_germany/
https://www.euractiv.com/section/po...or-investment-despite-german-budget-problems/

 

[cyrusfox]

3) 2 or 3 days ago, Samsung announced that they were in the process of removing all humans from their chip factories, using AI to run the equipment. The few people left will be so highly skilled compensated, unlikely to be interested in the hassle of being part of a labor union. Columbus OH is very close to a number of major engineering universities to draw labor from (OSU, Case Western, Pitt, CMU, Penn State etc.) They are close enough to New York to pull from the talent pool that IBM and Global foundries uses as well. This engineering labor pool is far less expensive than that found in California and Arizona.

This is rich... That is the last thing AI is going to be capable of, turning wrenches. yes AI would be great in replacing production (Wafer loading, responding to OOC/OOS). I would wager that we will achieve/see full self drive at a capable level before we are able to eliminate manual labor via AI coupled with robotics.

 

[kjfatl]

This is rich... That is the last thing AI is going to be capable of, turning wrenches. yes AI would be great in replacing production (Wafer loading, responding to OOC/OOS). I would wager that we will achieve/see full self drive at a capable level before we are able to eliminate manual labor via AI coupled with robotics.

Refer to the article below from about 3 days ago:
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...h-for-full-automation-continues-at-full-steam
The article explains what Samsung is doing better that I can.

 

[cyrusfox]

1) Be aware that Intel FAILED miserably at 10nm chips but now are pumped up to make 1.5nm narrow gated chips in Germany. That's hype.

Intel is the only one buying High NA, TSMC is not touching it till 2030, so there is a lot suggesting Intel is going to have a quicker route to more advance and smaller nodes, and Germany looks to be getting one, hence this article. This is not hype. Intel was stuck at 10nm because they refused to go on advance EUV lithography, rather they pushed on with DUV and lost the lead/advantage

 

[cyrusfox]

Refer to the article below from about 3 days ago:
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...h-for-full-automation-continues-at-full-steam
The article explains what Samsung is doing better that I can.

What that article appears to be referring to is process automation, in terms of plasma processing (PVD, Etch, cePVD, pALD, & PLAD, those are all the plasma processes I can remember).

The system is primarily designed to monitor and analyze the production process in real time and currently can automatically handle plasma uniformity.

Samsung's ultimate goal is to have fully unmanned semiconductor production facilities by 2030. Achieving this will require developing systems that can manage large amounts of data and optimize equipment performance automatically.

We must have different definitions of what unmanned means, you can already have a full remote crew monitor and adjust process parameters outside a factory. But when a wafer crashes in a tool, or when you have a power bump, Going to need a lot of human glue to get the factory up and running again.

This level of automation they are attempting isn't that novel to me(depends on what they are ultimately doing, maybe more a mark against the article). Plasma control while critical is only a very small part of fabrication and their are simpler methods that achieve equivalent results then throwing advance sensors at everything.

 

[cyrusfox]

It's pretty notable how fast Intel is going from DUV to EUV to EUV high NA.
Do I think old EUV will be able to keep up on node improvements with EUV high NA? No, it will likely be comparable to DUV falling behind EUV.

How far were we able to take 193nm DUV after we hit the wall at around 45nm...
≈10nm, achieving 1/4 the dimensions(makes sense, pitch quad).

How low can TSMC take 13.5nm sourced EUV... They have a lead as well, not as far as Intel's but still a lead. I bet they can keep up on print resolution, I am not as certain about their ability to match Intel's innovation in terms of: backside power, packaging, or RibbonFET.

 

[cyrusfox]

This 15A/14A was likely in planning as 3nm before the name change.

You are right, lines up to Anandtechs table

Intels old naming was: 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm, 2nm, and 1.4nm

 

[kjfatl]

You are right, lines up to Anandtechs table

Intels old naming was: 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm, 2nm, and 1.4nm

How does this align with TSMC and Samsung process naming? Are these marketing names now relatively equivalent across TSMC Intel and Samsung?

 

[purpleduggy]

Remember back in the day when Tomshardsware did the reviews from cutting edge chips made in German fabs when the Pentium 3 and Athlon Thunderbird both breached 1Ghz. Looking forward to those days returning. Go Intel!

 

[Toddler2]

IBM: 2nm: 333.33
TSMC: 10nm: 52.51, 7nm: 91.20, 5nm: 171.30, 3nm: 292.21
Intel: 10nm: 100.76, 7nm(Intel 7): 100.76, 5nm(Intel 4/3): 200
Samsung: 10nm: 51.82, 7nm: 95.08, 5nm: 126.89
(million transistors per mm2)

So going by Intels former scaling, I'd assume their 20A has 400m transistors per mm2.
TSMC started lying about scale way way way before Intel as you can probably tell by that chart:
Their 3nm has 292m transistors per mm2. IBM sends their research to Samsung, so expect IBM's numbers to end up with Samsung.
However, TSMC does still have a slight tech advantage on performance when comparing their latest N3E iteration to Intels 20A. While Intels 20A node with its PowerVIA reportedly beats TSMCs N3E in wattage. With 18A Intel will beat TSMC again on both accounts. Though TSMC claims they will regain the performance and power leadership against 18A with their N2 node (I'm guessing around 450-480m t/mm2?). While the N3X seems to beat 18A in performance, but not in power.

However, TSMC's N2 node seems to have hit delays, and won't be out before sometime in 2026.

We now know that Intel will be at 1.5nm, or 15A (maybe around 700m t/mm2?) more precisely at their Magdeburg fab set for production in 2027 (not sure if this is scale or not). But Pat did not state if this will be Intel's first 1.5 fab. He only said that it will be their most advanced. That won't rule out a potential for a fab in Arizona or Ohio also producing 1.5nm even sooner. The risk of having a new location being the first to produce a new leading edge is probably too high. With 20A/18A, Arizona will produce it before Ohio goes straight to 18A. Because the Ohio site is fresh. Not to mention that Arizona will produce 20/18A a year before Ohio. I suspect it will be the same story with Magdeburg. Another fab will potentially be at say 16A a year prior. And then Magdeburg will go straight to the 14A version (unless they call it 15A and 13A).

To sum it up, Intel could be at 16A or 15A in 2026, or possibly early 2027. The same year as TSMC moves to N2, or later in the year.

Tsmc reportedly also wants to keep using normal EUV until the end of the decade and their N1 node in 2030. This could potentially put tsmc in the same spot as Intel was in during their 14 nm delays. Multi-patterning is more difficult, and tsmc will need to use that.

The story regarding node delays is nothing more than a story regarding TSMC's machines. And the adaptation of them.

To counter the accusations of Pats so called anti-chinese rethoric, I would say this. Pat only responds to the current global political climate. It has nothing to do with being anti-chinese, but everything to do with wanting production to move back home. The chips act is nothing more than what Taiwan and SK did two decades ago, and what China has done almost a decade ago now as well. It is nothing more than a question of being self sustained with food. You don't want to rely on having all your foods shipped to you from half a world away. That makes no sense to me, and all the asians claiming self sustainment is the same as being anti-chinese, needs to look in the mirror of reality a bit more closely.