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Intel-Fab-42

Several years agone, Intel announced that it wouldn't stop its 14nm manufacturing plant, Fab 42. When Intel announced the motion, 22nm was still Intel'southward leading-edge process node, though 14nm was on the horizon and would start rolling out in mobile products late that year. Putting Fab 42 on ice was a tacit access from Intel that its plans to take market share from ARM with Atom weren't going particularly well, and that the PC manufacture wasn't going to need a new fab any time before long.

Now, Intel has announced that it will be bringing Fab 42 online, but non as a 14nm facility. Instead, Fab 42 will be brought online at the 7nm node, and to exist online within 3-4 years. Intel expects to create approximately 3,000 jobs direct, with a ten,000-job impact on Arizona itself. Semiconductor manufacturing work in Arizona pays a median wage of $22 per hour (~$46,000 per year) according to the BLS. That'southward not fabulous, only a family with two full-time earners at that pay rate would be well above the median household income in the The states.

"Intel's business continues to abound and investment in manufacturing capacity and R&D ensures that the pace of Moore's constabulary continues to march on, fueling engineering science innovations the world loves and depends on," said Krzanich. "This factory volition help the U.S. maintain its position as the global leader in the semiconductor industry."

TickTick-Pao

Intel'south old Tick-Tock model has been replaced by PAO, slowing the charge per unit of new node introductions.

It isn't articulate notwithstanding if Intel volition be shutting down any facilities once Fab 42 is online. The company has several plants that will be at or near twenty years old by 2020, and it typically shuts older plants down as new ones ramp up. Then again, the industry isn't moving as quickly every bit it once was. When Intel thought it was going to shift to 450mm wafers in the near futurity, information technology might've fabricated sense to drive new fab construction, since larger wafers means larger equipment, and new equipment might not accept fit well in the electric current buildings. With 450mm wafers dead, there's less need to retire old equipment.

One possibility is that Intel decided to build Fab 42 out so it would have a near-new fab to deploy Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography, or EUV. The company has previously stated that information technology doesn't anticipate introducing EUV before the 5nm node, which would put it roughly half-dozen years abroad from now. If the at present-cancelled 450mm wafer initiative could've sparked new capital expenditures, the EUV rollout (if it ever happens) could exist even harder to retrofit into existing facilities. At nowadays, EUV equipment requires vastly more ability and cooling to operate compared to 193nm ArF, and some pieces of equipment are considerably larger.

To be clear, this is speculation on my office — only I strongly suspect that Fab 42 will be completed with an center towards fitting information technology out for easier EUV adoption in the future. Intel has non forecast that information technology expects the PC market to improve in the nearly future, but the visitor could be betting that increased datacenter demand and cloud service scaling will drive time to come product adoption, even if the consumer marketplace declines further.