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Intel's 10 nm-Geared Fab 42 Enters Operational Status

Raevenlord

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Intel has finally sounded the "full steam ahead" whistle for its Fab 42, set in Arizona. Fab 42 has a storied past to it, as Intel started its construction back in 2011. It was actually finished by 2013, and by 2014 all essential infrastructure for semiconductor fabrication was there - except for the fabrication equipment itself. You see, Intel aimed for this factory to produce 450 mm wafers (instead of the industry standard 300 mm) in the 14 nm process. However, back in 2014, Intel wasn't sure about demand for its 14 nm products - and the company was actually planning to debut 10 nm back in 2016, so it sort of made sense. Of course, then came the 10 nm delays, the 14 nm supply issues, and backporting of certain products to other less cutting-edge processes. If only Intel had had a crystal ball.





Then came the 7 nm decision; Intel announced, back in 2017, that it was investing a cool $7 billion to populate the maligned Fab 42 with 7 nm fabrication equipment. But then, of course, 10 nm kept slipping, and with it, 7 nm as well; and years of constrained production on 14 nm meant demand for Intel chips was threatening to break the company's in-house fabrication philosophy dam (TSMC, where art thou?). As such, Fab 42 has been geared up for 10 nm fabrication, looking to increase output capacity to sate demand of Intel's current edge process; this places Fab 42 as Intel's third operational fab with 10 nm output (alongside its Israel and Oregon plants). Whether Intel's Fab 42 has an easy modernization path towards 7 nm production or not is uncertain - 7 nm, as Intel announces it, features both DUV (Deep UltraViolet) and EUV (Extreme UltraViolet) fabrication technologies, with EUV lacking from the current 10 nm technology. The fab will be able to be upgraded to newer fabrication tech, of course; it just remains to be seen how easy that actually is for the company.

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Pretty vague? Its doing 10nm, hopefully, except the products in the wild are like unicorns.

It might do 7nm, but maybe not.

Sounds like great business
 
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"full steam ahead"

 

Raevenlord

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Please stop posting about Intel 10nm's science fiction. That's never gonna happen! Not to mention intel and 7nm... fiction too. I'd rather see ads.

Ehrm... well, that's new.
 
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Well, given that scanning of actual chips shows that 14nm++... Intel has 24nm by 24nm transitors, where 7nm TSMC has 22nm by 22nm, I'd expect Intels 10nm to beat TSMC 7nm.
 
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Well, given that scanning of actual chips shows that 14nm++... Intel has 24nm by 24nm transitors, where 7nm TSMC has 22nm by 22nm, I'd expect Intels 10nm to beat TSMC 7nm.

Exactly, its all marketing lies.
 
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As we know, Intel has been losing ground to competition from AMD because it had not been able to produce 10nm chips, thus giving AMD an advantage, as they were using TSMC's equivalent 7nm node. So when I hear that Intel delayed opening Fab 42 because there wasn't enough demand for their 10nm products, I have to say I find that statement very difficult to understand. It sounds like they're living in an alternate universe.
Of course, maybe not anticipating Fab 42 to have been ready to open as soon as it was, maybe they didn't have the designs for the products for which there would be demand - the blast AMD out of the water products we're all expecting from Intel - quite ready, and so the statement was true, just with certain unstated qualifications that one wouldn't think of at first hearing.
 
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Please stop posting about Intel 10nm's science fiction. That's never gonna happen! Not to mention intel and 7nm... fiction too. I'd rather see ads.
Please stop spreading FUD.
Intel have probably shipped more 10nm chips than AMD have shipped 7nm chips. Ice Lake-U/Y might be boring to most of us in here, but it sells in huge volumes. The sad thing is the lack of 10nm desktop parts.
 
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For guys expecting us to upgrade every time they launch a new CPU, they sure seem quite incapable of planning their own production line upgrade.
 
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What does 10nm mean without the marketing speak (i.e. actual process size)?
 
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