Intel kicked off a day-long event on its foundry business on Wednesday featuring appearances by luminaries at Intel as well as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and US Secretary of Commerce Gena Raimondo. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was slated to join Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in a late fireside chat as well.
The official name of Intel Foundry Services has been shortened to Intel Foundry, a sign that Intel is indeed an actual foundry with multiple customers who rely on Intel to make their chip designs into reality, including AI chips. Intel said in a blog post that the premiere Direct Connect event was designed to “unveil how the company plans to transform the foundry industry and become the world’s first and only fully integrated foundry for the AI era.”
CEO Pat Gelsinger added, "AI is creating an unprecedented opportunity for the world's most innovative chip designers and for Intel Foundry."
Intel is also on track with its commitment to launch five chip nodes in four years, a claim which Gelsinger is expected to repeat during keynote remarks available for livestream to the public at 11:30 ET Wednesday in the Intel Newsroom. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/article/ifs-direct-connect-keynote-livestream.html#gs.4ks4pw
In briefings with reporters, Intel said EDA partners Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens, Ansys, Loretz and Keysight have disclosed tool qualification and IP readiness to enable foundry customers to accelerate advanced chip designs on the Intel 18A. These companies affirmed EDA and IP enablement across Intel node families.
During the Intel event, Arm CEO Rene Haas also appeared on stage to describe a somewhat surprising initative to use Intel foundry for Arm-based SoCs which will allow startups to develop Arm-based technology. The cooperation with Intel will be with its foundry business and not the Intel chip design side.
Also, Gelsinger introduced a video in which Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said his company will use the Intel 18a process for one of its designs.
Craig Orr, vice president of Intel Foundry, also repeated earlier goals of the Intel foundry that include its growing in size and volume to become the second largest global foundry to TSMC by 2030.
But Orr said Intel has an important distinction from other major foundries because of its long history with its broad systems background. “We’re a systems company becoming a foundry, not the other way around,” Orr said. “Intel has led the industry by defining systems architecture. Reference designs and open standards and PCIe came from Intel.”
The five nodes in four years roadmap is still in place, he reiterated, noting that Intel 7 and 4 are now selling in market, while Intel 3 is ready for high volume production. Also, 20a and 18a nodes are “back on track for process leadership this year,” Orr said. He added that Clearwater Forest, the company’s next-gen Xeon, is taped out.
Also, in what might have been the first public acknowledgement, the 14a node is on track for late 2026, he said, making it the first Intel chip produced with High NA EUV lithography. That is a newer process from ASML that uses EUV light to print tiny features on a silicon wafer.
Intel’s roadmap can be summarized as “big nodes every two years and smaller evolutions in between,” Orr said.
The 14a mention by Orr “shows Intel is moving forward,” going from 20 to 18 angstroms and now down to 14, said Bob O’Donnell, founder and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.
O’Donnell said he was impressed with the fact Intel was holding a customer event around its foundry work and it appears to have stability around ambitious goals they set when Gelsinger arrived three years ago. He noted that Intel tried before in 2013 to produce chips for Altera using the 14nm process, but Intel Foundry has come much further along than that earlier effort.
The IFS Direct Connect event “is really about credibility,” added Jack Gold, chief analyst at J. Gold Associates. “Having a good number of partners attend and speak at an event shows that it’s not just Intel pushing foundry, but the industry is enthusiastic to have another credible foundry option, especially one with Intel’s resources and expertise.”
Intel has been eager to receive CHIPS Act funds, something which could be revealed when Raimondo speaks at the event. GlobalFoundries won a preliminary grant of $1.5B on Monday from the CHIPS Act to go for a new fab in New York state and two upgraded fabs in New York and Vermont.
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