US Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, was a notable guest speaker during yesterday's Intel Foundry Direct Connect Keynote—she was invited on (via a video link) to discuss the matter of strengthening the nation's semiconductor industry, and staying competitive with global rivals. During discussions, Pat Gelsinger (Intel CEO) cheekily asked whether a "CHIPS Act Part Two" was in the pipeline. Raimondo responded by stating that she is till busy with the original $52 billion tranche: "I'm out of breath running as fast as I can implementing CHIPS One." Earlier this week, her department revealed a $1.5 billion planned direct fund for GlobalFoundries: "this investment will enable GF to expand and create new manufacturing capacity and capabilities to securely produce more essential chips for automotive, IoT, aerospace, defense, and other vital markets."

Intel is set to receive a large grant courtesy of the US government's 2022-launched CHIPS and Science Act—exact figures have not been revealed to the public, but a Nikkei Asia report suggests that Team Blue will be benefiting significantly in the near future: "While the Commerce Department has not yet announced how much of the funding package's $52 billion it would grant Intel, the American chipmaker is expected to get a significant portion, according to analysts and officials close to the situation." Raimondo stated that: "Intel is an American champion company and has a very huge role to play in this revitalization." The US Commerce Chief also revealed that she had spoken with artificial intelligence industry leaders, including OpenAI's Sam Altman, about the ever-growing demand for AI-crunching processors/accelerators/GPUs. The country's semiconductor production efforts could be bolstered once more, in order to preserve a competitive edge—Raimondo addressed Gelsinger's jokey request for another batch of subsidies: "I suspect there will have to be—whether you call it Chips Two or something else—continued investment if we want to lead the world...We fell pretty far. We took our eye off the ball."

The recently concluded Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) event (in Katowice, Poland) played host to another emerging Windows 11 handheld gaming computer—attendees spent hands-on time with potentially Meteor Lake APU-powered pre-release devices. International audiences were treated to a small selection of photos from IEM, as teased by Team Blue's Gaming division last weekend: "A new handheld PC is approaching. The Tulpar brings gaming on the go!" Exact details/specifications and user impressions have not reached the wider world, but many believe that rebadged Emdoor EM-GP080MTL units were showcased in Southern Poland last week. Tulpar is a subsidiary company of Turkish brand, Monster Notebook—it mainly sells gaming laptops and gear in UK and German markets.

Tulpar's mysterious handheld reportedly sports a seven inch display, indicating that it is a slightly smaller device when lined up against the EM-GP080MTL model (8-inch, 1200p). Internet sleuths reckon that the Tulpar shares many of the same technical underpinnings—general Emdoor OEM specs seem to include an unspecified Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake-H processor, Arc Graphics 5 and 32 GB LPDDR5X. The EM-GP080MTL was unveiled several months before the debut presentation of MSI's Claw—another Meteor Lake-H-based handheld—at last month's CES trade show. Later on, MSI confirmed that three distinct Claw SKUs will be heading to retail—with an entry-level version sporting Intel's Core Ultra 5-135H CPU, and more expensive options utilizing Core Ultra 7-155H processors.

Intel is aiming to get its $20 billion fabrication location—in New Albany, Ohio—up and running by 2025, but the advanced manufacturing facility is facing another round of setbacks. According to a WCMH NBC4 local news report (covering the Colombus, Ohio area), a planned "oversized equipment" reshuffle has been delayed—the shifting of heavy machinery was supposed to start last weekend. Extreme weather conditions (flooding) have been cited as major factor, as well as the complicated nature of transporting "overweight and oversized" loads to Team Blue's 1000-acre site. Workers are set to resume efforts this weekend—starting no later than February 17. Tom's Hardware has kept tabs on the Ohio fab's progress: "The project to move the equipment is expected to last over nine months, meaning this phase of Intel's construction could be done near the end of 2024. There isn't a firm indication of how much work remains to be done at the site after the equipment is delivered." TPU previously covered the leading-edge location's indefinitely postponed groundbreaking ceremony—CHIPS Act subsidies were not delivered in an expected timely manner back in 2022.

A couple of media outlets (Tom's Hardware, Network World, etc.) have received an official statement regarding the slippage of events in New Albany: "While we will not meet the aggressive 2025 production goal that we anticipated when we first announced the selection of Ohio in January, 2022, construction has been underway since breaking ground in late 2022 and our construction has been proceeding on schedule. Typical construction timelines for semiconductor manufacturing facilities are 3-5 years from groundbreaking, depending on a range of factors...We remain fully committed to the project and are continuing to make progress on the construction of the factory and supporting facilities this year. As we said in our January 2022 site-selection announcement, the scope and pace of Intel's expansion in Ohio may depend on various conditions." Industry insiders believe that an "opening ceremony" could occur around late 2026, or even early 2027.

Intel's Core i9-14900T processor was "officially" released last month alongside an expanded population of "Raptor Lake Refresh" products—the T-class alternative to Team Blue's flagship desktop Core i9-14900 CPU is a less glamorous prospect, hence almost zero press coverage and tech reviews. Its apparent lack of visibility is not helped by non-existent availability at retail, despite inclusion in Team Blue's second wave of 14th Generation Core processors (Marketing Status = Launched). The Core i9-14900 (non-K) is readily obtainable around the globe, as a lower-power alternative to the ever greedy Core i9-14900K, but their T-class SKU sibling takes frugality to another level. TPU's resident CPU tester, W1zzard, implemented six distinct power limit settings during a i9-14900K supplemental experiment, with the lowest being 35 W—coincidentally, matching the i9-14900T's default base power.

His simulated findings were not encouraging, to say the least, but late last week BenchLeaks noticed that a lone test system had gauged the T-class part's efficiency-oriented processing prowess. Geekbench 6.2.2 results were generated by an ASRock Z790 PG-ITX/TB4 build (with 64 GB of 5586 MT/s DDR5 SDRAM)—scoring 3019 in the overall single-core category, and 16385 in multi-core stakes. The latter score indicates a 22% performance penalty when referenced against Tom Hardware's Geekbenched i9-14900K sample. The publication reckons that these figures place Intel's Core i9-14900T CPU in good company—notably AMD's Ryzen 9 7900 processor, one of the company's trio of 65 W "non-X" SKUs. Last March, W1zzard was suitably impressed by his review sample's "fantastic energy efficiency"—the Geekbench 6 official scoreboard awards it 2823 (single-core) and 16750 (multi-core) based on aggregated data from multiple submissions.

A Taiwan Economic Daily news article proposes that a couple of high profile clients are considering TSMC's 2 nanometer process—Apple is widely believed to be the first customer to join the foundry's queue for cutting edge services. The report posits that Intel is also signed up on the Taiwanese firm's 2 nm reservation list—TSMC is expected to start production in 2025—insiders reckon that Team Blue's "Nova Lake" CPU family is the prime candidate here. Its CPU tile is alleged to utilize TSMC 2 nm node. Intel's recent "Core" processor roadmaps do not display any technologies beyond 2025—many believe that "Nova Lake" is pencilled in for a loose 2026 launch window, perhaps within the second half of the year.

The existence of "Nova Lake" was revealed late last year by HWiNFO patch notes—a short entry mentioned preliminary support for the family's integrated GPU. Intel is engaged in hyping up of its own foundry's 20A and 18A processes, but remain reliant on TSMC plants for various bits of silicon. Industry tipsters reckon that aspects of "Lunar Lake" CPUs are based on the Taiwanese foundry's N3B node. Team Blue Corporation and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) announced a new development partnership last week, but initial offerings will arrive on a relatively passé "12-nanometer semiconductor process platform." TSMC's very advanced foundry services seem to be unmatched at this juncture.

Intel presented its next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" processor family during September's Innovation Event—their roadmap slide (see below) included other Birch Stream platform architecture options. Earlier this week, Team Blue's software engineers issued a Linux kernel patch that contains details pertaining to codenamed projects: Sierra Forest, Grand Ridge and the aforementioned Clearwater Forest. All E-Core Xeon "Sierra Forest" processors are expected to launch around the middle of 2024—this deployment of purely efficiency-oriented "Sierra Glen" (Atom Crestmont) cores in enterprise/server chip form will be a first for Intel. The Sierra Forest Xeon range has been delayed a couple of times; but some extra maturation time has granted a jump from an initial maximum 144 E-Core count up to 288. The latest patch notes provide an early look into Clearwater Forest's basic foundations—it seems to be Sierra Forest's direct successor.

The Intel Xeon "Granite Rapids" processor family is expected to hit retail just after a Sierra Forest product launch, but the former sports a very different internal configuration—an all "Redwood Cove" P-Core setup. Phoronix posits that Sierra Forest's groundwork is clearing the way for its natural successor: "Clearwater Forest is Intel's second generation E-core Xeon...Clearwater Forest should ship in 2025 while the open-source Intel Linux engineers begin in their driver support preparations and other hardware enablement well in advance of launch. With engineers already pushing Sierra Forest code into the Linux kernel and related key open-source projects like Clang and GCC since last year, their work on enabling Sierra Forest appears to be largely wrapping up and in turn the enablement is to begin for Clearwater Forest. Sent out...was the first Linux kernel patch for Sierra Forest. As usual, for the first patch it's quite basic and is just adding in the new model number for Clearwater Forest CPUs. Clear Water Forest has a model number of 0xDD (221). The patch also reaffirms that the 0xDD Clearwater Forest CPUs are using Atom Darkmont cores."