Inside Intel’s Hail Mary to regain chip dominance

Everyone entering the factory must wear a bunny suit and dress or dress in a clean room. Cosmetics, hair products, perfumes, colognes, and aerosol products are prohibited. Workers are divided by metallurgical class. There are people who work with copper and people who don’t. Copper people wear orange suits instead of white, and must suit up and take off in their own clean room.

The Intel fab employee who helped me fit my suit proudly told me that he had done the same for two U.S. presidents. President Obama visited Fab 42, and Biden visited Fab 52, which is currently under construction. As of late September, President Trump had not yet visited, but Intel spokesman Corey Pforzheimer said, “We warmly welcome President Trump as he tours America’s cutting-edge research and development and cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing.”

Instead of shuffling around and pulling levers to keep the wheels of production grinding, workers are quietly managing robots. They stand at a (sterile) computer station as a container called a front-open unified pod (FOUP) whizzes through a maze of robot tracks overhead. The rows of devices seem endless. The floor underneath was reinforced and reinforced, as even the slightest shake could ruin the entire chip.

The lithography section of the facility was filled with a strange glow that turned our white suits neon green and those in copper suits pink. Intel asked fab tourists not to reveal the names of its suppliers, except for ASML, a Dutch manufacturer that makes some of the world’s most advanced lithography equipment. WIRED spotted two giant ASML Twinscan machines that appeared to be in operation. Space for two more people was taped on the floor next to them.

Intel has not yet disclosed how many semiconductors it expects to produce or manufacture per year at Fab 52. For now, the 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 chasing. That means hyperscaler customers, huge data center contracts, and someone looking to spend billions of dollars to gain an edge in AI. Whale.

Complete design review

Intel’s Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest chips will be manufactured using a manufacturing process that ditches decades of proven design techniques in favor of two new technologies the company calls RibbonFET and PowerVia. ibbonFet is a transistor architecture that stacks transistors in a way that allows for higher density, while PowerVia moves power interconnects from the top of the silicon stack to the bottom of the chip.

Intel began working on a new design approach in 2021, and early tests show that RibbonFet and PowerVia Improved performance. According to reports, these new chips will 30% less energy than previous generations.