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Intel to invest US$7 billion to finish Fab 42 factory where it will produce 7nm chips

By Koh Wanzi - on 9 Feb 2017, 10:18am

Intel to invest US$7 billion to finish Fab 42 factory where it will produce 7nm chips

Intel Fab 42

Intel has said that it will spend US$7 billion to complete construction on Fab 42, a factory in Chandler, Arizona that will eventually be used to produce chips based on the 7nm node. The plant is poised to be the most advanced semiconductor factory in the world, and is expected to take three to four years to complete.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich made the announcement at the White House, partly to show support for “the new administration’s policies to level the global playing field and make US manufacturing competitive worldwide through new regulatory standards and investment policies”.

In a press release, the chipmaker set forth expectations for the creation of 3,000 “high-tech, high-wage” jobs for process engineers, equipment technicians, and facilities-support engineers and technicians at the site. In addition, a further 7,000 jobs will be created indirectly to support the factory.

Fab 42 was first announced as early as 2011, when Intel still expected to make 14nm chips there. Completion was originally set for 2013, but a downturn in PC sales led Intel to say in 2014 that it would build 14nm chips at existing sites in Arizona and Oregon instead. 

The increased complexity of 7nm manufacturing has also bumped up the original estimate of 1,000 new jobs to the current 3,000, but that may be offset somewhat by Intel’s announcement last April that it would cut 12,000 workers worldwide.

Image Source: Intel

And while there was no mention of an actual timeline for when 7nm might arrive, Fab 42’s expected completion in three to four years may provide a rough guide.

That said, Intel’s 10nm desktop Cannonlake processors will likely arrive in 2018, and we’re also still waiting on the Icelake and Tigerlake chips as the latter two stages of Intel’s new Process-Architecture-Optimization strategy. In fact, 7nm is so far off that we don’t even know the codenames for those chips yet.

As an interesting side note, it’s worth pointing out that not everyone is committing to 10nm. GlobalFoundries, which makes chips for AMD, is skipping 10nm entirely in favor of 7nm.

Either way, it looks like we’ll be stuck with Moore’s Law for a little while longer, even if companies are already looking ahead to next-generation stuff like graphene.

Source: Intel 

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