Earlier today, three of Intel's South Korean authorized distributors announced the introduction of Raptor Lake-R-based "Value Pack Genuine" buying options—Danawa's news section stated that the involved companies are: PC Direct, Coit, and Intec & Company. The newly revealed "reasonably priced" packages will contain 14th Generation Core i5-14600KF or i5-14400F processors. A photo preview (see below) showcases very plain blue retail boxes (with no logo), adorned with information-carrying stickers. The freshly unveiled "Value Pack (genuine product)" designs are region exclusive (for the moment); seemingly slotting somewhere in-between Intel's traditional "Boxed" retail and barebones "Tray" processor offerings.

According to the Danawa report, one of the local distributors stated: "this is a very meaningful moment as it is the first time that an official Intel value pack has been released in Korea. We are pleased to offer a more reasonable price while maintaining the same warranty period and standards as existing genuine products. We hope that this release will allow more consumers to upgrade their PCs without burden." Western news sites have highlighted the Core i5 14600KF Value Pack's cheapest available price point (identified via the Danawa comparison engine); KRW 284,540 (~$199 USD). The traditional "Boxed" retail equivalent goes for KRW 295,700 (~$207 USD), while the barebones "Tray" (OEM-oriented) package is priced at KRW 261,200 (~$183 USD). Tom's Hardware checked out the new offering's Batch # and Serial # codes: "on Intel's warranty information page, (it) said that the ATPO (Batch #) we listed indicated that it was a tray processor...We'd like to believe the numbers on the image were just placeholders that belong to a tray processor, or that Intel RMAs in South Korea are all handled by its distributors." Danawa's news piece repeatedly claims that the two new options offer lower pricing compared to "existing genuine box products," but come with the "same genuine warranty" terms.

Sparkle, a notable Intel GPU board partner, introduced its dual-fan GUARDIAN custom design late last year. The Taiwan-based manufacturer's Arc B570 GUARDIAN 10 GB model launched mid-way through January—on day one, TechPowerUp's W1zzard awarded this particular card with "Highly Recommended" and "Great Value" badges. In a December leak, Sparkle's roadmap revealed Sparkle's plans for an upcoming Arc B580 GUARDIAN 12 GB SKU. A launch window was not denoted, but the new card would seemingly arrive after the early 2025 release of Sparkle's B580 TITAN Luna OC model. VideoCardz and its network of observers have detected a new listing on the official Sparkle website; signalling the B580 GUARDIAN's arrival.

Sparkle's Arc B580 GUARDIAN graphics card seems to be available for purchase in the United Kingdom, at the time of writing. CCL Computers and AWD IT have units in-stock at their respective warehouses, ready for immediate shipping. Both e-tailers have priced their offerings at £289.99 (including VAT), AWD has kindly knocked off £10 from their original demand of £299.99. Overclockers UK has a pre-order listing, coming in at a very reasonable £274.00 (incl. VAT). The Sparkle Arc B580 GUARDIAN 12 GB model conforms to Intel reference specifications, so global costs of ownership are likely sticking close to baseline MSRP.

In an exclusive report, Laptop Mag has extracted intriguing disclosures from Intel's Robert Hallock. The company's VP and General Manager of Client AI and Technical Marketing was happy to announce that new-generation processors are lined up for inclusion within next waves of handheld gaming PCs. Industry rumors posited that things would end with Team Blue's Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" generation of APUs; as featured on the recently deployed MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Claw 7 AI+ models. First-generation devices with "Meteor Lake" chips did not disrupt the market, and struggled to keep up with AMD Ryzen Z1 chipset-based rivals. Despite negative conjecture suggesting a withdrawal, Hallock revealed that a certain department is growing in size: "Intel is beefing up its staff to support gaming ISVs who want to do handhelds."

Team Blue's fortified support network is touted to expand the market reach of portable gaming PCs; the Intel executive elaborated on this topic: "we're starting a number of internal programs to give them more assistance in targeting this performance profile because—relative to what they're accustomed to—(handhelds) are still relatively rare in terms of availability." Hallock and colleagues are diving in with a new strategy; game development studios are on the receiving end of pre-release hardware: "a lot of game devs tend to just target what they have on their desks or in their QA labs...so (we're) arming them with more handhelds as prototype devices. Getting them dev kits leading into Panther Lake."

Unannounced Intel processor families have emerged online over the past week—one source, Jaykihn, has unearthed a treasure trove of speculative mobile SKUs. Today's discovery pushes into the enterprise market segment; focusing on Team Blue's "Granite Rapids-W" (GNR-W) platform, likely equipped with Redwood Cove cores. The latest leak suggests an upcoming emergence of "Mainstream" and "Expert" workstation-oriented product tiers, allegedly prepared with the company's rumored W890 motherboard chipset. Past generations of "Xeon W" HEDT processor families have rolled out with entry-level and high-end offerings.

The leaker reckons that the mainstream Intel Granite Rapids-W "Xeon W" lineup will arrive with 4-channel memory support and 80 PCIe Gen 5 Lanes. Team Blue's higher-end "Expert" tier is anticipated with 128 PCIe Gen 5 lanes and 8-channel memory support. In addition to leaking processor information, Jaykihn outlined basic details regarding the W890 chipset—they believe that board designs will have access to 24 PCIe Gen 4 lanes, as well as 8 Gen 4 lanes for Intel's proprietary link (DMI) between northbridge and southbridge. The leaker did not divulge details of upcoming socket types—Team Blue is notorious for its elaborate rollout out of multiple LGA platforms.

So far, this Friday (February 7) has been a bumper day for Intel CPU-related leaks. Golden Pig Upgrade and Jaykihn appear to be in competition with each other—they have uncovered all manner of speculative treasures across desktop and mobile segments. The latest revelation provides an early insight into unannounced feline-themed next-gen CPUs, courtesy of a Jaykihn social media post. Team Blue's Panther Lake processor family is slated for launch within the latter half of 2025—Intel officially stated that it would be their "lead product" on 18A. Older rumors had the "mobile-exclusive" Panther Lake processor family linked to a mixed configuration of new "Cougar Cove" P-cores and updated "Skymont" E-cores. According to today's leak, a variety of core configurations and feature sets are in the pipeline.

Jaykihn has listed three Panther Lake SKUs, and a "more mainstream" lower-end Wildcat Lake model. Common features include support for Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and LPDDR5X memory. Team Blue's rumored highest-end Panther Lake-H (PTL-H) processor appears to max out with a grand total of sixteen cores—consisting of 4 P-cores, 8 E-Cores, and 4 LP cores. The integrated graphics solution is (allegedly) a 12 core Xe3 "Celestial" GPU, with support for LPDDR5X memory—it is the only one on the list to completely jettison DDR5 compatibility. Insiders believe that the total platform (TOPS) rating is 180. As interpreted by VideoCardz, a 12-core "Panther Lake-U" (PTL-U) SKU is reportedly free of efficiency (E) units. The sole Wildcat Lake (WCL) model seems to sport a 2 P-core, 4-LP, and 2-Xe3 configuration.

Intel is reported to be eyeing a revival of its "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop processor design—Golden Pig Upgrade disclosed this "strange" revelation via an updated Weibo blog post. Back in 2023, the Chinese hardware reviewer and leaker extraordinaire theorized that Team Blue's much-rumored shelving of "ARL-S/HX Refresh" came down to cost/benefit considerations relating to accommodating an upgraded NPU in the chip's tile-based design. Last September, reports suggested that Intel had put the final kibosh on a 14th Gen Core Ultra 8P+32E "Arrow Lake Refresh" processor series—leaked roadmaps had a launch window marked down for late 2025, going into 2026. Industry watchdogs have picked up on Golden Pig Upgrade's latest forecast—prompting further theorizing.

Intel has its mobile segment's future covered with Panther Lake (later in 2025) and Nova Lake (2026), but a notable gap exists in their desktop world. Nova Lake's desktop S-series is slated for launch at some point in 2026, so this year could be prime territory for a mild refresh of existing Arrow Lake-S processors—on the LGA1851 socket. Golden Pig Upgrade reckons that refreshes of ARL-S (desktop) and ARL-HX (high-end laptop) are back on Team Blue's upcoming product roadmap. Industry moles reckon that an updated NPU design—potentially similar to the one housed in Lunar Lake mobile chips—will be the only major upgrade lined up for the so-called "Core Ultra 300" processor series. Intel's current-gen flagship model—Core Ultra 9 285K—has NPU performance topping off at 13 TOPS. Refreshed Arrow Lake SKUs could be deployed with an improved NPU aspect, perhaps capable of hitting 48 TOPS.

Late last week, Team Blue's gaming division celebrated a new milestone—their social media account released a 20-second-long video that swept across a large sprawl of modern titles. The accompanying message boasted: "we've hit the mark on 150+ games with XeSS support, with more on the way! Experience peak gaming for yourself with Intel XeSS AI upscaling today." Intel's launch of Arc "Alchemist" discrete graphics cards marked a more mainstream introduction for their proprietary Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) technology. Earlier in 2022, Xe LP-based iGPUs and Iris Xe MAX discrete GPUs were the first pieces of Team Blue hardware to be enabled with XeSS support.

XeSS 2 was introduced last December—during the official unveiling of Intel's Arc B580 "Battlemage" graphics card—but not enough time has elapsed to gain widespread support. VideoCardz's weekend sleuthing revealed only two compatible titles—in contrast, Team Blue's first-gen super sampling upscaler support list now numbers 159. Since late last year, PC gamers have been snapping up wallet-friendly Arc B580 models. Another—slightly cheaper—XeSS 2-enabled product arrived last month; with the release of Arc B570 cards. We hope that the number of (XeSS 2) supported titles increases, in parallel with the rising popularity of Battlemage GPUs.

Intel has officially announced that its "Clearwater Forest" Xeon processor family will be arriving somewhere in the first half of 2026. During a recent earnings call, interim co-CEO—Michelle Johnston Holthaus—discussed Team Blue's product roadmap for 2025 and beyond: "this year is all about improving Intel Xeon's competitive position as we fight harder to close the gap to the competition. The ramp of Granite Rapids has been a good first step. We are also making good progress on Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A server product that we plan to launch in the first half of next year." Press outlets have (correctly) pointed out that Intel's "Clearwater Forest" Xeon processors were originally slated for release in 2025, so the company's executive branch has seemingly admitted—in a low-key manner—that their next-gen series is delayed. Industry whispers from last autumn posit that Team Blue foundries were struggling with their proprietary 18A (1.8 nm) node process—at the time, watchdogs predicted a postponement of "Clearwater Forest" server processors.

The original timetable had "Clearwater Forest" server CPUs arriving not long after the launch of Intel's latest line of "Sierra Forest" products—288-core models from the Xeon 6-series. The delay into 2026 could be beneficial—The Register proposes that "Xeons bristling with E-cores" have not found a large enough audience. Holthaus disclosed a similar sentiment (in the Q4 earnings call): "what we've seen is that's more of a niche market, and we haven't seen volume materialize there as fast as we expected." Despite rumors swirling around complications affecting chip manufacturing volumes, Intel's temporary co-leaders believe that things are going well. David Zinsner—Team Blue's CFO—stated: "18A has been an area of good progress...Like any new process, there have been ups and downs along the way, but overall, we are confident that we are delivering a competitive process." His colleague added: "as the first volume customer of Intel 18A, I see the progress that Intel Foundry is making on performance and yield, and I look forward to being in production in the second half, as we demonstrate the benefits of our world-class design."

Intel's freshly uploaded fourth-quarter 2024 "CEO/CFO earnings call comments" document has revealed grand CPU-related plans for 2025 and beyond. One of Team Blue's interim leaders—Michelle Johnston Holthaus—believes that "Nova Lake" processors (a next-generation client family) will arrive in 2026, following a comprehensive rollout of "Panther Lake" CPU products. This official timeline matches previously leaked and rumored development schedules—most notably, in a shipping manifest that was discovered last week. In recent times, industry watchdogs have linked "Nova Lake" to Intel's own 14A node and a TSMC 2 nm process node. Additionally, tipsters pointed to an apparent selection of Coyote Cove performance cores and Arctic Wolf efficiency-oriented cores.

Following yesterday's official announcements, a leaker shared several insights—theorized core configurations and manufacturing details were posted on the Hardware subreddit. Community members were engaged in a debate over Intel's "killing of Falcon Shore," but a plucky contributor—going under the moniker "Exist50"—redirected conversation to all-things "Nova Lake." They believe that Intel has shifted all "compute dies to TSMC" for manufacturing, after a change in plans—initial designs had the "8+16 die" on TSMC's N2P, and the "4+8 die on Intel 18A." Exist50 seemed to have inside track knowledge of product ranges: "Nova Lake (NVL) has a unified HUB/SoC die across mobile and desktop. So yeah, the baseline there is 4+8+4. But there's at least one more die for mobile." The flagship desktop (NVL-S or NVL-SK) chip's configuration could feature as many as sixteen performance cores and thirty-two efficiency cores, due to tile reuse—2x (8P+16E). Exist50 advised Intel CPU enthusiasts to forgo current generation offerings. "Nova Lake" should be: "quite a jump from Arrow Lake (ARL) in terms of MT performance, to say the least. I think anyone who buys ARL will end up regretting it, big time!"

Intel's relatively new lineup of Arc B-series "Battlemage" desktop graphics cards consists of B580 and B570 GPUs—these affordable models have been warmly welcomed by reviewers and customers alike. PC hardware enthusiasts—with larger wallets—will be pondering over possible future launches of mid-tier or higher-end SKUs. Industry insiders have not picked up on much chatter regarding possible successors to Team Blue's mid-range Arc "Alchemist" A770 and A750 GPUs. The speculation machine has been fired up again, following the appearance of three new "Battlemage" PC IDs. Intel's Linux kernel has been updated with these new additions—as discovered by Tomasz Gawroński (aka GawroskiT), earlier today.

A brief sentence outlines "3 new PCI IDs for BMG," with no further or follow-up information included. Several industry watchdogs believe that Intel's graphics hardware division has moved on from creating new Xe2 "Battlemage" products—Team Blue representatives have officially admitted that their Xe3 "Celestial" architecture is complete, and its engineers have already started work on the Xe4 "Druid" GPU IP. Instead, the three new identifiers could be linked to a late December leak. At the time, Quantum Bits claimed that Arc B580 variants with larger pools of VRAM were in the pipeline—these "Arc Pro" cards are supposedly workstation-oriented models. Insiders reckon that a product launch is planned for later in 2025.

Intel executives are reportedly dealing with a major challenge that affects its portfolio of European manufacturing facilities—a recent RTÉ News article placed focus on Team Blue's Fab 34 site, located in Leixlip, Ireland. Energy costs are climbing across the globe, but inside sources believe that company leaders have expressed concern regarding the cost of powering the Irish facility. Last week's report posits that senior Intel figures are committed to keeping Fab 34 alive for a while—seemingly unaffected by a widespread cost-cutting initiative—this high-volume production site remains: "critical to its European operation for at least the next seven years."

Intel is reportedly already engaged in talks with the Irish government—likely negotiating over strategies that will lower its local energy bills in County Kildare. Additionally, other channels are—supposedly—being explored via the EU Chips Act. RTÉ News gathered comments from unnamed senior sources at the recently concluded Davos World Economic Forum—one individual stated that Ireland's (advantageous) lower labor costs are sharply offset by the higher cost of energy. The report claims that Team Blue: "estimates that in Ireland energy costs are 15 cent per kilowatt-hour, around double that in other markets where Intel operates." Fab 34's operating costs have been compared to similarly-equipped facilities in the USA and Israel. Executive sources believe that Ireland-specific problems stem from infrastructure backlogs in the renewable sector, and the fixed cost of delivering energy from offshore wind farms—the latter tends to pass expenses on to customers.

Intel's Platform Engineering and Client Segments groups are actively looking into ways of reducing computer e-waste, and (in parallel) enhance product repairability. The company's newly proposed "Modular PC Design" is set to take a "sustainable approach" across three key modularity levels: factory, field and user. Team Blue's blog post goes into great detail about revised laptop and mini-PC designs—with the "right-to-repair" movement serving as a major influence. Many "consumer activists and environmental groups" have advocated for improvements in personal computer design—Intel appears to be listening, but a firm release timeline has not been set.

Intel's proposed new standards will revolve around repairability and upgradability—as explained in their blog: "the right-to-repair emphasizes the importance of being able to fix and upgrade PCs on one's own. Improving repairability requires fundamental changes starting from the design methodology." Team Blue's Modular PC program—for laptops—breaks away from the tradition of utilizing an "all-in-one motherboard." A reference diagram shows off three internal modules: a motherboard package and two "universal" left and right I/O units. These separate boards can be: "utilized across various platforms or market segments leads to cost savings by streamlining the duration of the design cycle and minimizing the engineering investment required. The I/O boards for Premium Modular designs are engineered to be common between the fan-less Thin & Light system, which operates within a 10 W power envelope, and the premium fanned designs, which function within a 20 W (single fan) and 30 W (dual fan, Wi-Fi only SKU) power envelope." Framework recently celebrated its fifth year of operation—its modular laptop designs have seemingly "inspired" a few copycats.

ONIX has quietly added Intel Arc B580 GPU-based models to its Newegg brand store—signalling the brand's arrival on North American's e-tail landscape. TechPowerUp first picked up on this new manufacturer's existence during Team Blue's introduction of Arc B-series "Battlemage" graphics cards—soon followed up with an updated version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z; adding "PCI vendor detection for ONIX." The emerging Chinese manufacturer's Odyssey OC and Lumi OC models are currently "out of stock" on the Newegg store, but compelling pricing ($10 above Intel's baseline MSRP) has attracted press coverage.

It is not clear whether initial supplies of the two ONIX cards were snapped up quickly, but Newegg states on both listings: "this product is temporarily out of stock because of high demand, we will replenish it as soon as possible." Currently, the Arc B580 Odyssey OC 12 GB (black) model is priced at $259.99, while its Lumi OC (white) sibling goes for $269.99—note: Newegg demands a $9.99 fee for shipping. VideoCardz reckons that ONIX is competing closely with Sparkle—a veteran Intel GPU board partner—and charging less than GUNNIR for equivalent specs/fittings. ONIX's official website features a product page for an Odyssey B570 10 GB model—not listed by Newegg, but we expect it to turn up soon. Intel and its AIBs declared B570's retail availability last week.

A significant legal challenge has emerged for Intel's leadership as shareholders aim for the company's representation of its foundry business performance. LR Trust has filed a lawsuit against former CEO Pat Gelsinger and current co-CEO David Zinsner, seeking to return substantial executive compensation amid allegations of misleading statements and financial mismanagement. The lawsuit centers on Intel Foundry Services (IFS), a division that was once positioned as a crucial growth engine for Team Blue. The Intel Foundry, as it is now called, is here referred as Intel Foundry Services, which was its older name back in 2023. According to court documents, LR Trust claims that while Intel's leadership painted an optimistic picture of IFS's trajectory, the division struggled to attract major clients and accumulated significant losses. Gelsinger's $207 million compensation package is at the heart of the dispute, where shareholders now demand that these funds should be returned to the company.

The legal action also targets additional compensation received by Zinsner, arguing that executive rewards were secured through misrepresenting the company's financial health. The allegations point to a troubled 2023, during which Intel's chip production unit reportedly lost $7 billion. These challenges extended into 2024, as increased investments in new fab facilities further strained the company's finances. The lawsuit alleges that executives issued "materially false and misleading" statements regarding cost savings and revenue potential, ultimately driving shareholder value to the very bottom. LR Trust's legal filing accuses Intel's leadership of breaching its financial duties through inadequate internal controls and inaccurate financial disclosures. Beyond seeking the return of executive compensation, the lawsuit pursues damages and legal cost reimbursement, with any recovered funds potentially being returned to Intel's coffers. Intel has yet to respond formally to these allegations. This is just another lawsuit in line as Intel already has several other lawsuits going on, with one recent from August.

Speculated lower-end Intel second generation Arc GPUs popped up via SiSoftware Sandra database entries around mid-March—evaluation samples are likely in the hands of trusted hardware partners. Yesterday, momomo_us happened upon another interesting shipping manifest, following a series of AMD-related leaks. The latest list reveals five "Battlemage" products—three utilizing the BMG-21 GPU, and the remaining two being based on the BMG-10 design. These identifiers have appeared in older leaks, although the latter has been viewed in place sight—chez Intel Malaysia's Failure Analysis Lab.

Previous leaks suggest that these second generation Arc models (Xe2) reside within a "High-Performance Graphics" (HPG) discrete GPU family—the Xe2-HPG BMG-10 range is likely targeting an "enthusiast" market segment, while the Xe2-HPG BMG-21 tier is rumored to offer mid-tier performance. Intel staffers have expressed confidence about a possible late 2024 launch window. Back in January, Tom "TAP" Petersen revealed that the Arc hardware team had already moved onto third-gen "Celestial" GPU endeavors: "I'd say about 30% of our engineers are working on Battlemage, mostly on the software side because our hardware team is on the next thing." The first-gen deck has not been cleared fully it seems—the Alchemist family could be joined by two new variants in the near future.

A CPU-Z screenshot has been shared by YuuKi_AnS—the image contains details about an alleged next-gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor engineering sample (ES). The hardware tipster noted in (yesterday's post) that an error had occurred in the application's identification of this chunk of prototype silicon. CPU-Z v2.09 has recognized the basics—an Intel Granite Rapids-SP processor that is specced with 80 cores, 2.5 GHz max frequency, a whopping 672 MB of L3 cache, and a max. TDP rating of 350 W. The counting of 320 threads seems to be CPU-Z's big mistake here—previous Granite Rapids-related leaks have not revealed Team Blue's Hyper-Threading technology producing such impressive numbers.

The alleged prototype status of this Xeon chip is very apparent in CPU-Z's tracking of single and multi-core performance—the benchmark results are really off the mark, when compared to finalized current-gen scores (produced by rival silicon). Team Blue's next-gen Xeon series is likely positioned to catch up with AMD EPYC's deployment of large core counts—"Granite Rapids" has been linked to the Intel 3 foundry node, reports from last month suggest that XCC-type processors could be configured with "counts going up to 56-core/112-threads." Micron is prepping next-gen "Tall Form Factor" memory modules, designed with future enterprise processor platforms in mind—including Intel's Xeon Scalable "Granite Rapids" family. Industry watchdogs posit that Team Blue will be launching this series in the coming months.

Phoronix has taken a short break away from monitoring the latest goings-on at AMD's software department—the site's editor-in-chief, Michael Larabel, took a moment to investigate patch notes relating to Intel's Xe and i915 Linux kernel graphics drivers. Earlier today, he noticed that "two additional PCI IDs" have been added to Team Blue's DG2/Alchemist family. This discovery prompted further sleuthing—after: "some searching and turning up hits within the Intel Compute Runtime code, 0x56BE is for an Intel Arc Graphics A750E variant and 0x56BF is for an Intel Arc Graphics A580E."

The aforementioned GPU identification codes seem to exist in gray area—the patch notes do not reveal whether these new variants are destined for desktop or mobile platforms. VideoCardz cited a remark made by "Bionic_Squash"—the reputable leaker reckons that the: "IDs are linked to Intel's Arc Embedded series. This family is tailored for industrial, business, and commercial applications, ranging from edge systems to powering large interactive screens." It is highly likely that Intel is paving the way for embedded/low-power variants of its existing Arc A750 and A580 GPUs. Tom's Hardware proposes that Team Blue is clearing out its inventory of remaining Alchemist silicon ahead of a successive generation's rollout—Battlemage is a major priority in 2024.

Construction of Intel's New Albany, Ohio fabrication site started back in late 2022—since then, a series of setbacks have caused anticipated timelines to slip. Team Blue's original plans included a 2025 opening ceremony—last month, this was amended to late 2026 or early 2027. New equipment deliveries have been affected by extreme weather conditions—Intel appears to be shoring up its flood prevention systems at their Licking County location. Ohio's Department of Development received a progress report at the start of this month, authored by Team Blue staffers—revised figures indicate that Fabrication sites 1 and 2 are expected to reach operational status somewhere within "2027-2028."

Jim Evers (Intel's Ohio Site Manager) stated: "we are making great progress growing the Silicon Heartland. In addition to the approximately $1.5 billion investment in completed spends through 12/31/23 referenced in the report, Intel has an additional $3 billion in contractually committed spends underway, totaling $4.5 billion committed toward our Ohio One projects." Intel committed a hefty $20 billion greenfield investment into the two Ohio wafer fab sites, but the latest progress report indicates that just under a quarter of that budget has trickled out of company coffers (so far). Evers's statement continued: "this investment is growing every day as we work to establish a new manufacturing campus to build leading-edge semiconductor chips right here in Ohio." A Tom's Hardware report reminds us about Team Blue's New Albany project receiving "over $2 billion in incentives." Industry rumors posit that the US government is readying a multi-billion dollar grant for Intel's Arizona facility.

Two years ago, Intel Corporation and the Italian Government initiated negotiations over the "enabling" of a new state-of-the-art back-end manufacturing facility—a potential investment of up to 4.5 billion euros was mentioned at the time. Italy's chipmaking fund was put together in order to attract several big semiconductor firms, but Team Blue appeared to be the primary target. This week, Minister Adolfo Urso confirmed to media outlets that Intel had: "given up or postponed its investments in France and Italy, compared with others that it plans in Germany." Intel has not commented on this announcement according to a Reuters report—a spokesperson declined to make a statement.

Italy's Business Minister stated that he will welcome a continuation of negotiations, if Intel leadership chooses to diversify its construction portfolio outside of Germany: "if it decides to complete those projects, we are still here." His nation is set to receive further investments, following a recent announcement from Silicon Box—the Singapore-headquartered advanced semiconductor packaging company has signed an up to €3.2 billion deal. Their new Italian facility will: "enable next generation applications in artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC)," and other segments. Urso reckons that "there will be others in coming months." He also added that a ministry task force had conducted talks with unnamed Taiwanese groups.

According to the latest report by Reuters, the US government is preparing to announce a multi-billion dollar grant for Intel's chip manufacturing operations in Arizona next week, possibly worth more than $10 billion. US President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will make the announcement, which is part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act aimed at expanding US chip production and reducing dependence on China and Taiwan manufacturing. The exact amount of the grant has yet to be confirmed, but rumors suggest it could exceed $10 billion, making it the most significant award yet under the CHIPS Act. The funding will include grants and loans to bolster Intel's competitive position and support the company's US semiconductor manufacturing expansion plans. This comes as a surprise just a day after the Pentagon reportedly refused to invest $2.5 billion in Intel as a part of a secret defense grant.

Intel has been investing significantly in its US expansion, recently opening a $3.5 billion advanced packaging facility in New Mexico, supposed to create extravagant packaging technology like Foveros and EMIB. The chipmaker is also expanding its semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Arizona, with plans to build new fabs in the state. Arizona is quickly becoming a significant hub for semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. In addition to Intel's expansion, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is also building new fabs in the state, attracting supply partners to the region. CHIPS Act has a total funding capacity of $39 billion allocated for semiconductor production and $11 billion for research and development. The Intel grant will likely cover the production part, as Team Blue has been reshaping its business units with the Intel Product and Intel Foundry segments.

The US government is reported to be preparing a very healthy $3.5 billion investment in Intel Corporation—a mid-week published Bloomberg article proposes that the White House has authored a new "fast-moving spending bill." Congressional aides believe that Team Blue—upon official approval/signing off of funds—will be tasked with the production of advanced semiconductors for military and intelligence programs. Bloomberg posits that the resources will be sourced from a "Secure Enclave" project, seemingly linking to a wider tranche of funds within the US government's CHIPS and Science Act. The agreement/contract is expected to run over a period of three years. According to Bloomberg: "the Senate is expected to pass the legislation by a Saturday (March 9) deadline."

Reports from last November suggested that Intel leadership and US government representatives had engaged in negotiations regarding funds for military and intelligence chip applications—the construction costs for new manufacturing facilities were estimated to be in the $3 billion to $4 billion range. A Commerce Department statement was submitted to Bloomberg, but they only commented on an overall $10 billion budget: "We are still reviewing the effect of the appropriations text on the program...(we look) forward to continuing to work with Congress on implementing the Chips and Science Act in a manner the promotes our economic and national security." TSMC, Micron and Samsung are expected to receive "multi-billion-dollar awards" in the near future—these multinational corporations will assist in a bolstering of North American chip manufacturing capabilities.

Intel's "AI Everywhere" hype campaign has generated the most noise in mainstream and enterprise segments. Team Blue's Gaudi—a family of deep learning accelerators—does not hit the headlines all that often. Their current generation model, Gaudi 2, is overshadowed by Team Green and Red alternatives—according to Intel's official marketing spiel: "it performs competitively on deep learning training and inference, with up to 2.4x faster performance than NVIDIA A100." Habana, an Intel subsidiary, has been working on optimizing Large Language Model (LLM) inference on Gaudi 1 and 2 for a while—their co-operation with Hugging Face has produced impressive results, as of late February. Siddhant Jagtap, an Intel Data Scientist, has demonstrated: "how easy it is to generate text with the Llama 2 family of models (7b, 13b and 70b) using Optimum Habana and a custom pipeline class."

Jagtap reckons that folks will be able to: "run the models with just a few lines of code" on Gaudi 2 accelerators—additionally, Intel's hardware is capable of accepting single and multiple prompts. The custom pipeline class: "has been designed to offer great flexibility and ease of use. Moreover, it provides a high level of abstraction and performs end-to-end text-generation which involves pre-processing and post-processing." His article/blog outlines various prerequisites and methods of getting Llama 2 text generation up and running on Gaudi 2. Jagtap concluded that Habana/Intel has: "presented a custom text-generation pipeline on Intel Gaudi 2 AI accelerator that accepts single or multiple prompts as input. This pipeline offers great flexibility in terms of model size as well as parameters affecting text-generation quality. Furthermore, it is also very easy to use and to plug into your scripts, and is compatible with LangChain." Hugging Face reckons that Gaudi 2 delivers roughly twice the throughput speed of NVIDIA A100 80 GB in both training and inference scenarios. Intel has teased third generation Gaudi accelerators—industry watchdogs believe that next-gen solutions are designed to compete with Team Green H100 AI GPUs.

The existence of Intel's upcoming Core i9-14900KS processor has been confirmed by a series of insider leaks and premature retail listings—an "alleged" example was photographed and appeared online right at the start of 2024. French e-tail listings produced evidence of two packages—a traditional retail box version, and a barebones tray option for OEM purposes. Earlier today, the I_Leak_VN social media account uploaded proof of a single "Special Edition" box sitting in an unnamed Vietnamese warehouse—it is not immediately clear whether units have reached retail facilities, or have just arrived on Southeast Asian shores. The embargo-busting post seemingly corroborates global insider information/whispers about distribution networks receiving stock—possibly in preparation for a rumored mid-March launch. VideoCardz believes that Vietnamese customers will be paying roughly $765 a pop—30% pricier than the current cost of 14th Gen Core flagship ownership.

Intel has been hyping up their artificial intelligence-augmented processor products since late last year—their "AI Everywhere" marketing push started with the official launch of Intel Core Ultra mobile CPUs, AKA the much-delayed Meteor Lake processor family. CEO, Pat Gelsinger stated (mid-December 2023): "AI innovation is poised to raise the digital economy's impact up to as much as one-third of global gross domestic product...Intel is developing the technologies and solutions that empower customers to seamlessly integrate and effectively run AI in all their applications—in the cloud and, increasingly, locally at the PC and edge, where data is generated and used." Team Blue's presence at this week's MWC Barcelona 2024 event introduced "AI Everywhere Across Network, Edge, Enterprise."

Nikkei Asia sat down with Intel's David Feng—Vice President of Client Computing Group and General Manager of Client Segments. The impressively job-titled executive discussed the "future of AI PCs," and set some lofty sales goals for his firm. According to the Nikkei report, Intel leadership expects to "deliver 40 million AI PCs" this year and a further 60 million units next year—representing "more than 20% of the projected total global PC market in 2025." Feng and his colleagues predict that mainstream customers will prefer to use local "on-device" AI solutions (equipped with NPUs), rather than rely on remote cloud services. Significant Edge AI improvements are expected to arrive with next generation Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake processor families, the latter will be bringing Team Blue NPU technologies to desktop platforms—AMD's Ryzen 8000G series of AM5 APUs launched with XDNA engines last month.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger engaged with press/media representatives following the conclusion of his IFS Direct Connect 2024 keynote speech—when asked about Team Blue's ongoing relationship with TSMC, he confirmed that their manufacturing agreement has advanced from "5 nm to 3 nm." According to a China Times news article: "Gelsinger also confirmed the expansion of orders to TSMC, confirming that TSMC will hold orders for Intel's Arrow and Lunar Lake CPU, GPU, and NPU chips this year, and will produce them using the N3B process, officially ushering in the Intel notebook platform that the outside world has been waiting for many years." Past leaks have indicated that Intel's Arrow Lake processor family will have CPU tiles based on their in-house 20A process, while TSMC takes care of the GPU tile aspect with their 3 nm N3 process node.

That generation is expected to launch later this year—the now "officially confirmed" upgrade to 3 nm should produce pleasing performance and efficiency improvements. The current crop of Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processors has struggled with the latter, especially when compared to rivals. Lunar Lake is marked down for a 2025 launch window, so some aspects of its internal workings remain a mystery—Gelsinger has confirmed that TSMC's N3B is in the picture, but no official source has disclosed their in-house manufacturing choice(s) for LNL chips. Wccftech believes that Lunar Lake will: "utilize the same P-Core (Lion Cove) and brand-new E-Core (Skymont) core architecture which are expected to be fabricated on the 20A node. But that might also be limited to the CPU tile. The GPU tile will be a significant upgrade over the Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs since Lunar Lake ditches Alchemist and goes for the next-gen graphics architecture codenamed "Battlemage" (AKA Xe2-LPG)." Late January whispers pointed to Intel and TSMC partnering up on a 2 nanometer process for the "Nova Lake" processor generation—perhaps a very distant prospect (2026).