The Hot Take: Good, needed more than just for their own products but defense too.
Intel's confidence in its 14A (1.4nm-class) fabrication process is rising as defect density drops. The company's own design teams are at work developing products that will use the technology, while external customers are now asking about 14A volumes Intel can get them, according to David Zinsner, chief financial officer of Intel, who spoke at Deustche Bank's 2026 Technology Conference. The CFO went as far as saying that 14A is Intel's best process since 22nm technology from the 2010's. But while the comment is optimistic, there is a…
The Hot Take: Long enough to finish OH I'm sure of. As long as it doesn't get in the way of defense manufacturing of course.
The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn claiming that Intel’s next two CPU generations could make life nastier for AMD by hogging more of TSMC’s tight 2nm capacity.
According to Jukan, Chipzilla is reportedly planning to use TSMC for parts of its Nova Lake and Razor Lake processor families. That will not cheer AMD, which already has to fight for space inside TSMC’s increasingly rammed fabs.
Intel is expected to start mass production of Nova Lake around January 2027. The chips were once expected to rely on…
The Hot Take: Filling capacity across the globe it appears. GOOD.
Intel is a hive of activity these days, so much so that it's now apparently rushing to fill its heretofore empty clean rooms while aggressively expanding capacity even in a location with relatively lower subsidies/tax credits and a much higher quantum of embedded geopolitical risk - Fab 38 in Israel. Hoffman Construction has updated its Fab 38 page to disclose 2026 as the wrap-up year of its contractual obligations, while a new Intel job vacancy for the Kiryat-Gat Site Master Planner has also opened up Back in July 2025, Intel had paused the…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…