The Hot Take: Um, so memory gets a law suit over 'forever chemicals' but not the other items? Doesn't that seem a bit odd?
Pushback against Micron's planned manufacturing complex in Clay, New York, which comprises four separate fabs, is once again at the center of an environmental lawsuit. Filed by Neighbors for a Better Micron and Jobs to Move America — the same groups that filed a separate lawsuit against Micron in January — filed a new complaint Friday, claiming that approved wastewater and air permits aren't valid and will allow Micron to leak "forever chemicals" into the Oneida River. Go deeper with TH Premium: Chipmaking(Image credit: tsmc)A deeper look at the chipmaking supply chainTSMC's $165 billion U.S. investments examinedChina reportedly reverse-engineers EUV toolChina bets on DUV, as EUV blockade reshapes chipmaking"The Permits were issued against eh backdrop of the significant environmental consequences already acknowledged through the course of the Micro Project's State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) review. including the release of PFAS and other highly persistent and hazardous chemicals," the complaint reads. "Rather than fully and meaningfully evaluate and address those consequences and impose the necessary protections before granting final authorization, [the Department of Environmental Conservation] issued permits that defer essential analyses, controls and limitations, and mitigation decisions until after issuance or until future regulations and studies have been conducted." The lawsuit names the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Onondaga County (where Clay is located), and Micron. Its claim is that, despite Micron receiving wastewater and air permits from the DEC, those permits aren't adequate to regulate the plant's emissions. In one part of the lawsuit, the petitioners claim the permits are "not routine operating approvals," and in another, claim the loose permit guidelines "are not collateral or technical omissions."Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, otherwise known as PFAS or "forever chemicals," are synthetic chemicals that are essential to semiconductor manufacturing. The chemicals are present throughout nearly the entirety of the manufacturing chain, necessitating strict water and air containment management to align with environmental regulations. "The SPDES permit authorizes the acceptance and discharge of Micron's industrial wastewater containing identified emerging contaminants, including PFAS compounds, but it imposes no substantive controls on those harmful contaminants beyond monitoring their presence and concentration." In January, the two petitioners named in this complaint filed another lawsuit against Micron, claiming that the project failed to comply with the state's environmental review process. Last month, Micron asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. It's still set for oral arguments on August 25, however. This lawsuit currently doesn't have a date set for oral arguments, if it ever reaches that point. The petitioners are seeking the nullification of both wastewater and air permits, which would force Micron back under the environmental review process, and costs associated with the suit.
The Hot Take: AMD past manufacturing arm getting US funds? We will see if they do anything productive to the industry, as it seems they aren't since they were created in my eyes.
The US government has signed a letter of intent to provide GlobalFoundries with $300 million in CHIPS Act funding and, at the same time, receive a one percent stake in the company worth roughly $269 million. The money's supposedly not a tit-for-tat, but an investment designed to spur development of silicon photonics networking technologies that the AI industry needs for datacenters. “With today’s compute supply chain investments, the Trump Administration is accelerating America’s innovation engine,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a canned statement. “These strategic investments will enhance our country’s domestic capabilities, create high-paying jobs and keep America at the forefront of the semiconductor industry.” GlobalFoundries’ previously announced Silicon Photonics Co-Packaged Advanced Light Engine (SCALE) is one of the technologies it’s pushing in order to support 400 Gb/s per lane connectivity, which is about the speed at which copper interconnects become problematic for large scale systems. Both CPO, where optical engines are integrated directly into the compute logic, and NPO, where the optics reside in a module adjacent to the compute, are expected to be big business over the next couple of years. At Computex in Taipei last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang quipped that these technologies would make Marvell Technology the next trillion dollar company. Over the past two years, system designs from Nvidia and AMD have grown from eight GPUs in a box to rack systems packing six dozen accelerators into a single machine. To meet growing AI demand, the chip designers are plotting even larger row-scale systems using optical interconnects. Since its spinoff from AMD, GlobalFoundries has moved away from leading-edge CMOS technologies in order to focus on more specialized processes. The company has become a leading producer of silicon photonics used in modern AI datacenters. In addition to next-gen silicon photonics tech, GlobalFoundries says the CHIPS Act funding will also support the development of novel optical materials, advanced packaging capabilities like 3D hybrid bonding, which will support the rollout of domestically manufactured near-packaged optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO). And thanks to the Trump administration, regular Americans will have a stake in the success of these technologies — or at least the ones GlobalFoundries ends up manufacturing. GlobalFoundries would not be the first American fab operator that Uncle Sam has secured equity from in exchange for CHIPS Act funding. Last summer, the Commerce Department converted $5.7 billion in previously awarded but not yet disbursed CHIPS Act grants, along with $3.2 billion awarded under the Secure Enclave program, into roughly a 10 percent stake in the struggling chipmaker. Bootnote: On Tuesday, Intel announced the Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program had reached its conclusion. The Department of Defense (DoD)-sponsored program offered incentives to industry partners to develop test chips in Intel fabs on the company’s 18A process technology. The program’s end comes as Intel shifts its manufacturing might to a new government program called the Secure Enclave, which will manufacture semiconductors for use by US defense industrial base (DIB) customers. “Early access to Intel 18A has positioned DIB customers to leverage Secure Enclave while meeting critical size, weight and power requirements,” the company wrote. ®
The Hot Take: Good, USA needs a strong Intel manufacturing.
Intel has overcome one big challenge that will lead to the creation of hyper-large chips beyond 12x reticle size through advanced packaging technologies. Intel Is Creating The World's Most Advanced & Largest Chips in the US at Its New Mexico "Rio Rancho" Facility, Leveraging Next-Gen Packaging Innovations Modern-day chips don't rely on a single piece of silicon, and instead utilize a range of silicon dies, interconnected together using the latest packaging solutions. The terminology used for such designs is chiplets, and chiplets were made to overcome scaling bottlenecks and the growing demand for compute. Inside Intel's Rio Rancho, New Mexico […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-cracks-encapsulation-wall-blocking-hyper-large-chips-using-advanced-packaging/
The Hot Take: As it should be, given all of the other ones are own by foreign entities.
Intel has completed its RAMP-C program, which now aims to enable customers to move from test chips to domestic high-volume manufacturing. Intel RAMP-C Leads To Successful Development of a Strong "Design Enablement Infrastructure" Which Enables Commercial & Defense Customers To Design & Fabricate Chips Within the US Press Release: Intel Foundry has completed the Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program. Launched in September 2021, the program supported development of domestic, leading-edge CMOS technology and manufacturing in the United States, establishing a foundation for expanded trusted domestic semiconductor manufacturing. “The collaboration between the DoW and Intel on the Trusted […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-emerges-as-americas-only-leading-edge-chipmaker-as-ramp-c-hands-domestic-18a-production/
The Hot Take: ASML needs competition, but I wasn't saying from China. LOL
According to The Information (paywalled), a state-backed Shanghai company has begun mass-producing China's first homegrown immersion DUV lithography machines, with about five units expected this year for SMIC, Hua Hong, and CXMT. Roughly 20 more units are expected in 2027. Tom's Hardware reports: The Information didn't name the manufacturer, but its sources described the operation as having pulled DUV development teams from several Chinese companies, one of them the state-backed startup Shanghai Yuliangsheng Technology. SMIC has been testing a Yuliangsheng immersion tool since September 2025. Most components in the new systems are domestic, though some critical parts still come from Japan, and delays at local suppliers have held back output this year.
[...] China accounts for around 20% of ASML's net sales this year, down from 33% in 2025, driven mainly by mainstream logic demand... Independent analysis from the AI Futures Project in June put commercial-scale Chinese immersion DUV in the mid-2030s, with ASML holding 98.7% of the immersion market. Qualifying the new machines for production lines could take many months, and they trail ASML's tools on performance and build quality. China's domestic EUV effort, which Reuters first reported as a working prototype in December, remains years away.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Hot Take: USA domestic manufacturing is blowing up and saving Intel.
Intel Foundry might be heading into a big deal with NVIDIA, as the company is expected to offer packaging and wafer support for next-gen Feynman GPUs. NVIDIA Feynman GPUs Could Be Intel Foundry's Biggest Win To Date With Chipzilla Providing Both Packaging & Wafer Supply A deal between Intel and NVIDIA won't be a major surprise for those following our previous reports, but it is definitely a big win for Intel's Foundry business. Earlier this year, we reported that NVIDIA might be looking into Intel's upcoming process & advanced packaging technologies for its next-generation GPUs, codenamed Feynman. Well, according to […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-foundry-nvidia-feynman-gpu-wafer-packaging-deal/
The Hot Take: The more the merrier and helps Intel get back to track making and developing x86 CPUs. Hopefully GPUs too.
Fortinet on Tuesday revealed it will use Intel Foundry to fab its sixth-gen Security Processor (SP6), a nice win for Chipzilla's sputtering chipmaking biz. The chips feature dedicated accelerators designed specifically for the security and cryptographic operations required by modern hardware firewalls. The custom chips are one of Fortinet's defining features. Many cybersecurity hardware players build appliances around commodity hardware like x86 and Arm CPUs, but Fortinet prefers custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The two companies haven't said when the chips will enter production, much less what the SP6's speeds and feeds will entail, though we imagine it'll have a bit more pep than Fortinet's SP5 chips. The SP5 launched in 2023 and boasted support for layer 7 firewalling and IPsec VPN connectivity at speeds exceeding 30 Gbps. Throughput fell when advanced threat protection or SSL inspection was enabled, but Fortinet still claimed a speedy 4.3 Gbps and 3.3 Gbps, respectively. As you might have already figured out, Fortinet's SP line is designed primarily for smaller appliances like SD-WAN gateways, rather than larger datacenter-centric appliances built around its beefier NP and CP-series parts. While Intel couldn't offer much detail on the chip itself, we're told it will use the older Intel 4 process node rather than the leading-edge 18A process tech. Chipzilla also suggested Fortinet will draw on its experience in disaggregated semiconductor design and advanced packaging, which could mean a chiplet architecture with greater scalability. With so little detail, we can only speculate. Intel declined to say which technologies beyond Intel 4 the chip will use. The x86 giant also declined to comment on the availability of the product, noting only that "details regarding the Fortinet Security Processor 6 availability will be announced at a later date." While SP6 won't use the latest chipmaking tech, it will be built in an American fab by an American company, offering a level of supply chain security that remains difficult to find. If you want even remotely leading-edge silicon, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC are your only options. US-based production can still mean settling for a less advanced process, although TSMC's first Arizona fab has already begun churning out 4 nm silicon and Samsung aims to bring its new Texas plant online this year. Fortinet would not be the first to enlist Intel's manufacturing might for sensitive workloads. Under DARPA's HIVE program, the chipmaker built an eight-core, 528-thread processor with 1 TB/s silicon-photonics interconnects specifically to accelerate graph analytics workloads. But it doesn't stop at the DoD. Supply chain security is something Intel has leaned into as it has sought to reinvent itself from an integrated device manufacturer serving mainly itself, and occasionally the US government, into a full-fledged foundry ready to compete with Samsung and, ultimately, TSMC. In mid-2024, Uncle Sam awarded Intel $3 billion to establish a secure enclave for manufacturing chips for government agencies. Since then, the US government has taken a 9.9 percent stake in the American chip biz. ®
The Hot Take: Bitch and moan, better than paying the tariffs sir.
TSMC's CFO Wendell Huang shared last week that the firm is seeing strong demand from US customers. The executive's comments came after the Taiwanese firm's latest earnings report, which also saw it announce an additional $100 billion investment in the US. Huang outlined that TSMC's 3-nanometer facilities in the US should come online by the second half of next year and added that the costs of building facilities in the US were higher than in Taiwan. TSMC CFO Says US Fabs Cost Four To Five Times More To Build Than In Taiwan TSMC's latest $100 billion announcement will expand the […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/tsmcs-cfo-admits-us-fabs-cost-four-to-five-times-more-than-taiwan-yet-doubles-down-with-100b-bet/
The Hot Take: ASML's monopoly needs get challenged, but not sure if Quantum will just make them invalid. We'll have to wait and see I guess.
Intel has entered high-volume manufacturing using ASML's High NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology for a subset of its Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" processors, becoming the first company to ship high-volume logic products manufactured with the technology. ASML announced the milestone in an official press release on Wednesday, July 15, confirming that Intel Foundry is running the qualified High NA layers on its Intel 18A process node in Oregon.Go deeper with TH Premium: Chipmaking(Image credit: tsmc)A deeper look at the chipmaking supply chainTSMC's $165 billion U.S. investments examinedChina reportedly reverse-engineers EUV toolChina bets on DUV, as EUV blockade reshapes chipmakingAccording to ASML, Intel is using High NA EUV to pattern selected Intel 18A layers, with products already shipping to customers at yields matched to those achieved on ASML's existing NXE EUV platform. These layers are dual-qualified, meaning the same layer can be exposed on either an existing 0.33 NA NXE scanner or a 0.55 NA EXE scanner, with the resulting wafers being interchangeable.High NA EUV has long been viewed as the successor to today's EUV lithography, promising to extend semiconductor scaling by enabling manufacturers to print smaller, denser circuit patterns that are becoming difficult to achieve with existing tools. Until now, the platform had been confined to R&D work. ASML’s announcement marks the first time High NA EUV has been used to produce and ship a high-volume commercial logic product. Panther Lake, built on the Intel 18A manufacturing process, is spearheading this transition. Rather than replacing the company's entire lithography flow, Intel is applying High NA EUV to specific layers while the remainder of the chip continues to be manufactured using conventional lithography. High NA EUV builds on the same 13.5-nanometer extreme ultraviolet light used by today's scanners but increases the optical system's numerical aperture (NA) — how much light a lens system can collect and focus onto a silicon wafer — from 0.33 to 0.55. The higher value resolves finer features in a single exposure, allowing chipmakers to print smaller patterns with greater precision and process control.This increased resolution is expected to reduce reliance on complex multi-patterning techniques for some of the industry's most demanding layers, thereby simplifying manufacturing and improving feature fidelity. In the long term, these capabilities are expected to support higher transistor densities and improved performance in future processors, particularly as AI workloads continue driving demand for increasingly advanced semiconductor technologies."With increased resolution and better process control, the introduction of High NA EUV marks a substantial development in semiconductor lithography," said ASML President and CEO Christophe Fouquet. "We are proud to play a role in enabling the smaller, denser patterning that will accelerate advancements in AI and other emerging technologies." Intel and ASML have been working towards this milestone for several years. In 2024, Intel completed installation of one of the industry's first commercial High NA EUV lithography systems, the TWINSCAN EXE:5000, at its Hillsboro, Oregon, research and development facility. The company later became the first to qualify ASML's second-generation TWINSCAN EXE:5200B, which increases wafer throughput and overlay accuracy while incorporating an improved EUV light source over its predecessor.While the announcement represents High NA EUV's commercial debut, it does not mean Panther Lake is manufactured entirely using the new lithography platform. Instead, Intel has qualified High NA for selected layers, an approach that mirrors how new lithography generations are typically introduced into advanced semiconductor production before broader adoption across future nodes.Intel Foundry Executive Vice President and General Manager Naga Chandrasekaran said that qualifying the High NA process option on selected Intel 18A product layers enables the company's existing tool fleet to deliver higher manufacturing output while providing flexibility for future process technologies.Panther Lake itself is not a future product. Intel launched Core Ultra Series 3 at CES on January 5, 2026, opened preorders the following day, and put systems on shelves globally from January 27. The Core Ultra X9 378H followed in April alongside the value-tier Core Series 3, code-named Wildcat Lake, and the handheld-focused Arc G3 parts arrived on May 28.The announcement’s statement that the product is shipping to customers refers to wafer flow from the fab into the supply chain, rather than to a product launch. ASML says the two companies will continue working on High NA readiness, with the flexibility to incorporate the technology into future nodes based on customer needs — most immediately, Intel 14A, which Intel has designed to use High NA on a set of its tightest-pitch layers.
Intel is reportedly making a significant change to the manufacturing strategy for its upcoming Nova Lake processor family by shifting the majority of compute tile production back to Intel Foundry.