Intel grabbed the headlines a couple of days ago with the launch of Intel Foundry, its contract chip manufacturing business. The company’s CEO Pat Gelsinger called it as ‘a rebuilding of Intel’ and culmination of the goals that he set for the company when he returned to Intel three years ago. A part of his vision is to make Intel a ‘world-class foundry’ – perhaps a revival of a brand that was once an undisputed force in semiconductor manufacturing. In recent years, Intel’s leadership has been seriously challenged by competitors like TSMC and Samsung.
In its effort to regain the market leadership, it literally split itself into two with the formation of Intel Foundry – world’s first systems foundry for the AI era according to the company.
“Through our Intel Foundry, I want to manufacture every AI chip in the industry,” said Pat Gelsinger. “AI is profoundly transforming the world and how we think about technology and the silicon that powers it. This is creating an unprecedented opportunity for the world’s most innovative chip designers and for Intel Foundry, the world’s first systems foundry for the AI era. Together, we can create new markets and revolutionize how the world uses technology to improve people’s lives,” he added.
Watch Gelsinger’s full keynote here:
The company also announced an expanded process roadmap designed to establish leadership into the latter part of this decade at its first foundry event, Intel Foundry Direct Connect, which stood out due to the presence of Arm CEO Rene Haas, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Intel also announced a big win at the event – Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared that Microsoft has chosen a chip design it plans to produce on the Intel 18A process.
“We are in the midst of a very exciting platform shift that will fundamentally transform productivity for every individual organization and the entire industry,” Nadella said. “To achieve this vision, we need a reliable supply of the most advanced, high-performance and high-quality semiconductors. That’s why we are so excited to work with Intel Foundry, and why we have chosen a chip design that we plan to produce on Intel 18A process.”
Intel Foundry has design wins across foundry process generations, including Intel 18A, Intel 16 and Intel 3, along with significant customer volume on Intel Foundry ASAT capabilities, including advanced packaging.
In total, across wafer and advanced packaging, Intel Foundry’s expected lifetime deal value is greater than $15 billion.
Gelsinger also had a brainstorming session with OpenAI’s Sam Altman who reiterated why ‘AI is one of the greatest tools that humans have yet invented’.
Stuart Pann, senior vice president of Intel Foundry at Intel said, “We are offering a world-class foundry, delivered from a resilient, more sustainable and secure source of supply, and complemented by unparalleled systems of chips capabilities. Bringing these strengths together gives customers everything they need to engineer and deliver solutions for the most demanding applications.”
If all the hype and hoopla are anything to go by, Intel Foundry will turn out to be a big milestone for the chip maker.
