Ho Chi Minh City [Vietnam] May 1: Contrary to many forecasts, Intel continues to pursue the chip foundry segment in its ambition to redraw the map of the semiconductor chip industry, even commercially producing the world's most advanced chips.
That is what Intel announced at the Intel Foundry Direct Connect event that took place on the evening of April 29 (VN time) in Ho Chi Minh City. San Jose (California, USA).
Big ambitions
Speaking at the event, Mr. Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, affirmed: "Intel is committed to building the world's leading chip foundry to meet the growing demand for modern technological processes, advanced packaging processes, and guaranteed production capacity."
Mr. Lip-Bu Tan took over as CEO of Intel about 5 weeks ago amid the company's difficulties. In February 2024, under CEO Pat Gelsinger, Intel officially announced the launch of Intel Foundry - the world's first system chip foundry - to meet the era of artificial intelligence (AI). Intel Foundry aims to optimize the entire highly synchronous chip casting system from production to software synchronization to meet the booming AI era. Thereby, Intel and the associated ecosystem allow customers to innovate across the entire system.
Thus, as a multi-year empire of the world's chip industry, Intel not only develops its own branded chips, but also opens up the chip casting segment to produce chips for partners with a comprehensive ecosystem to meet each partner's specialized requirements. Intel has set an ambition to become the world's second-largest chip foundry by 2030. This means that Intel pursues a plan to redraw the map of the world's chip supply chain.
The Big Game
However, after only half a year, it costs too much for the chip casting segment, but the traditional chip business is not as effective as expected due to Intel's previous slowdown in developing AI chips, leading to many difficulties.
Therefore, after Mr. Lip-Bu Tan led Intel, the question is whether he will continue to pursue the chip foundry development plan of his predecessor Pat Gelsinger. The answer is yes. At the Intel Foundry Direct Connect event on April 29, Mr. Lip-Bu Tan pointed out that the total direct market value of the chip industry is growing rapidly, from about $700 billion in 2024 to soon reach $1 trillion by 2030. Therefore, Intel will continue to expand in this potential market and maintain its goal of becoming the world's second-largest chip foundry company by 2030.
To achieve this goal, Intel Foundry has been working with the first customers on the Intel 14A process (equivalent to the 1.4 nm process). This is the successor to the Intel 18A (equivalent to the 1.8 nm process). The company has shipped the first version of the Process Design Kit (PDK) for Intel 14A to customers.
Meanwhile, the Intel 18A is in the risk production stage and is expected to go into mass production this year. Currently, partners in the Intel Foundry ecosystem already have electronic design automation (EDA), reference processes, and intellectual property (IP) tools available to serve the production design process. The new variant of the Intel 18A process is the Intel 18A-P that delivers higher performance to best serve the needs of customers at the chip foundry. The original test wafers based on Intel 18A-P are being produced at the factory.
To put it more simply, Intel is promptly commercializing chip casting for advanced chips with processes below 2 nm right this year, which is not slower than the world's leading chip manufacturer, TSMC (Taiwan).
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
