Intel's New Fab for 14-nm Process

choi

Chris Nuttall, Intel's Ambitions Bloom in Arizona desert; Technology Hardware; News analysis; Plant to start with circuits just 14 billionth of a metre. Financial Times, Jan 23, 2012.

(a) In the window of print: $5bn  Cost of Intel plant Fab 42 due for completion in 2013

(b) Quote:

"It is more Silicom Desert than Silicon Valley.

"Arm-based chips are dominant in phones and tablets, and are now becoming powerful enough to appear in laptops and even servers--Intel's core markets.

"Smaller chips are key to Intel reducing power requirements and making its own incursions into the smartphone market

"Intel's main operations, on the outskirts of Phonex, cover 700 acres. Golf carts scurry beneath the shadow of Big Benny[, the world's largest mobile crane which at 740ft can lift as much as 3,200 tonnes,] helping workers get around a campus that has far outgrown its original plans when it was established 30 years ago.
   
"Fab 42 is creating thousands of construction and manufacturing jobs.

"But it [Intel] is more practical than patriotic. Dan Hutcheson, semicoductor analyst of VLSI Research, says it can cost as much as 50 per cent more to set up in a new location than to build on an existing site, as Intel is doing in Arizona, because of a lack of established expertise.

"Moving to a country just because it has lower labour costs also makes little sense. 'The issue is not labour costs, because the fabs are so automated, it is how you get the engineering talents.'

"Intel could also put its intellectual property at risk by making microprocessors somewhere like China, a country whose plans to build 60-70 fabs have foundered on its lack of IP.

"Across from Fab 42 site, the existing Fab 32 plant has been refitted for the latest 22nm microprocessors, codenamed Ivy Bridge and appearin in PCs this year. It is its third refit in 10 years as circuit widths have narrowed from 45nm to 32nm and then 22nm.

"While Fab 42 will resemble its neighbour [Fab 32], it has a twin being built on Intel's oregon's campus. This is an extensionof Intel's 'copy exactly' stategy, where development work and methods are reproduced at the manufacturing sites, enabling faster build-ups of production. this modular construction approach will give Intel a further advantage over its rivals, according to Mr Hutcheson.

Note: For "Big Benny," see
SGC-120; There's more than only Belgian beers and chocolates!  Sarens, undarted.
http://www.sarens.com/en/projects/sgc-120.aspx
("The crane is named 'Big Benny' after one of the 5 family shareholders, who was the driving force in the construction of this giant. This was unveiled by our Operations Director Carl Sarens (son of Benny Sarens) to the Belgian staff on a sunny but cold Sunday morning.")