▲ Source: TSMC

According to the report, Chris Camacho, president of the Greater Phoenix Arizona Chamber of Commerce, said that the Greater Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area uses the same amount of water as it did in 1957, a period in which the population grew sixfold, but water use remains at the same level. Camacho said frankly that if TSMC is interested in building more fabs in Arizona, the Arizona state government will continue to provide water guarantee for TSMC.

▲ Source: Intel

Camacho further stated that although Arizona is located in the Midwestern United States, manufacturing water only accounts for 5% of Arizona’s total water allocation, so there is still a lot of water available for potential semiconductor investors.

▲ Source: Intel

It is noticed that the report quoted Yang Yingchao, chairman of Kirkland Capital, as saying that compared with Intel’s previous construction situation, the periphery of the TSMC plant is much quieter. But considering that global semiconductors are currently in a downturn, being slower is not a bad thing. In addition, Yang Yingchao also pointed out that TSMC still faces severe challenges in competing with Intel for hydropower resources in Arizona.

▲ Source: Intel

According to reports, TSMC announced last year that it will have a semiconductor factory in Arizona, USA. The first phase of the project is expected to start mass production in 2024 and will introduce a 4 nm process. The second phase of the project is under planning and is expected to introduce a 3 nm process. TSMC will invest 40 billion U.S. dollars for this purpose, which is also one of the highest foreign direct investment projects in U.S. history, which has aroused great concern from the outside world.

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In fact, Intel has said from the beginning that it wants the sector to become a foundry on par with Samsung and TSMC in terms of scale. Now it seems that the company’s current plan is to make it the second-largest foundry by 2030.

Randhir Thakur, president of Intel Foundry Services, said in an interview with Nikkei Asia: “Our goal is to be the second largest foundry in the world by the end of this 20s, and (we) want to see lucrative foundry margins.”

To become No. 2 in the global foundry market means Intel must beat Samsung Electronics.

According to TrendForce, Samsung generated more than $20 billion in foundry revenue in 2021 and is expected to surpass that figure in 2022.

As of the first quarter of 2022, Samsung held about 16.3 percent of global foundry revenue, significantly behind market leader TSMC (53.6 percent) but significantly ahead of peers UMC (6.9 percent) and Grosvenor (5.9 percent).

By comparison, Intel’s IFS business unit has generated $576 million in revenue year to date. Once the acquisition of Tower Semiconductor is completed in early 2023, Intel’s IFS division will add about $1.5 billion in annual revenue, thus transforming it into the world’s 7th or 8th largest foundry, but still far below Samsung in terms of revenue.

To become the world’s second-largest chip foundry, Intel must adopt a multifaceted strategy that includes the following.

Developing cutting-edge process technologies to compete with Samsung and TSMC in terms of power, performance and area (PPA), while also considering yields and time to market.

Delivering leading-edge capacity to IFS customers.

Maintain Tower Semiconductor’s operational and competitive position through innovation of proven technologies.

Orders primarily from current TSMC and Samsung foundry customers, perhaps with some customers taken from GlobalFoundries and SMIC.

Big Moves
Intel previously gave a fairly aggressive process technology roadmap that includes high-volume production on its 18A process in 2025 and the possible introduction of high-NA extreme UV lithography for the 18A platform.

Intel’s production node plans are much more aggressive compared to Samsung and TSMC. Both Samsung and TSMC plan to start production of 2nm (20 Em class) chips in 2025, but this is the initial start-up time.

Intel’s plans don’t budge one bit when it comes to semiconductor capacity, either. The company is building 20A Fab 52 and Fab 62 fabs at a site near Chandler, Arizona; its first two 18A/20A fabs at a site near Columbus, Ohio; $3.5 billion worth of advanced packaging equipment; completing a new Intel 4 fab at a facility near Reclipp, Ireland; and a brand new fab near Magdeburg, Germany The company is also building a new plant near Magdeburg, Germany.

Overall, Intel plans to invest approximately $100 billion in new semiconductor manufacturing facilities over the next several years.

“Since the launch of IFS, we have been engaging with our foundry customers and it is clear that many of these companies see the need for a more resilient and geographically balanced semiconductor supply chain,” Thakur said.

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To this end Intel set up a new IFS foundry department, has served some customers, these two days Intel CEO Kissinger announced a new foundry model – the internal foundry model (internal foundry model), this model will not only be used for external foundry customers, Intel’s own products will also use this model. Intel’s own products will also use this approach to production.

Intel said that compared to the traditional foundry can only provide chip manufacturing or add a package model, Intel’s internal foundry model will open four major technologies, respectively, manufacturing, packaging, software and core (Note: core is the official name of the previously mentioned small chip design).

Intel’s official public number today also made a detailed explanation of the meaning of the four technologies are as follows:

First, wafer fabrication. Intel continues to aggressively advance Moore’s Law by offering customers its process technologies, such as RibbonFET transistors and PowerVia power supply technology, among other innovations.

Intel is steadily achieving its plan to advance five process nodes in four years.

Second, packaging. Intel will provide customers with advanced packaging technologies, such as EMIB and Foveros, to help chip design companies integrate different computing engines and process technologies.

Third, the core particles. These modular components provide greater flexibility in design, driving innovation across the industry in terms of price, performance and power consumption.

Intel’s packaging technology and the Universal Core Interconnect Open Specification (UCIe) will help cores from different vendors, or produced with different process technologies, to work better together.

Fourth, software. Intel’s open source software tools, including OpenVINO and oneAPI, accelerate product delivery and enable customers to test solutions prior to production.

In short, in the chip foundry industry, TSMC and Samsung are currently at the forefront, but Intel is ambitious and ambitious for this market, grabbing Samsung and TSMC’s share is destined, this time the internal foundry model is also their killer app to provide more additional services, with Intel’s new generation of 3nm, 20A and 18A processes in mass production in the next year or two. Intel’s threat to the other two will become greater and greater.

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According to the details of MediaTek and Intel cooperation, Intel also developed a new “Intel 16” process specifically for MediaTek, that is, Intel 16nm, based on 22nm FFL improvements, which is a very mature process.

MediaTek’s 16nm chip is expected to start mass production in early 2023, before the two sides did not announce the Intel 16 process-specific foundry products, today’s earnings meeting MediaTek CEO Lixing Cai confirmed some details, said the digital TV and mature process WiFi chip will be given to Intel foundry.

Considering that these two types of chips do not need the most advanced process, Intel 16 process can already meet the demand, this result does not surprise anyone.

In addition, MediaTek CEO Richard Tsai also appeased TSMC, in the advanced process will continue to maintain a close relationship with TSMC.

But previous news shows that Intel’s advanced processes, such as Intel 3 next year will also be mass production, MediaTek will also use this generation of processes, which is Intel really grabbing business with TSMC.

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Pictured is Intel Fab 42 in Arizona

Kevin Krewell, an analyst at Tirias Research, said of Intel’s partnership with MediaTek, “MediaTek has been a close partner of TSMC, so this is a pretty big deal.”

The deal comes at a good time for Intel. It could help draw attention to the importance of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, an issue at the heart of the $52 billion in CHIPS Act spending Intel is trying to convince Congress to pass. Intel has been lobbying for the subsidies, postponing the groundbreaking ceremony for a new manufacturing site in Ohio, where Intel will invest at least $20 billion. The new customer would significantly expand Intel’s manufacturing volume, helping it catch up with TSMC’s massive scale and justifying the ultra-high price tag of the new chipmaking facility, called a fab.

Randhir Thakur, division president, said, “Scale is important in our business. We have other products coming into our facility, and a key benefit is that it gives us scale.”

The geopolitical calculus of chip manufacturing is also changing. TSMC is in Taiwan and Samsung is in South Korea, two regions that have traditionally had good trade relations with U.S. companies.

Industry observer Dylan Patel concluded from TechInsights’ analysis, “China’s SMIC is using foundry processes to deliver commercially available chips in the open market, which is more advanced than any U.S. or European company.”

President Joe Biden is a strong supporter of the CHIPS Act, but despite bipartisan support and intense lobbying by the chip industry, congressional wrangling has prevented any actual funding. A scaled-back CHIPS Act funding bill advanced in the Senate last week, making it more likely that federal subsidies will be reduced by about $3 billion from the $10 billion price tag Intel wants to sign off on for each new plant it builds.

About 12 percent of chips are currently made in the United States, down from 37 percent in 1990, according to the 2021 Semiconductor Industry Association.

One of Intel’s key allies is the U.S. military, which doesn’t like the idea of having a foreign country responsible for building the electronic brains in every fighter jet, cruise missile and set of night vision goggles. in November, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a partnership with Intel and other U.S. semiconductor companies to promote a chip ecosystem based on Intel’s upcoming 18A manufacturing process, which, due to accelerated timing, will be the end of 2023.

Qualcomm also announced its enthusiasm for Intel 18A in 2021, but the partnership is still in more of an evaluation phase as the technology evolves.

Intel has a lot on its plate. TSMC is by far the largest foundry and has been investing aggressively, including building a new factory near Intel’s home base of Phoenix. And Samsung has beaten Intel and TSMC in the race to advance chips by redesigning transistors, the core electronic data-processing components on chips. In June, Samsung said it had started producing transistors in a design it calls “Gate All Around” that reduces power consumption and improves performance.

MediaTek’s competitors are companies such as Qualcomm and Samsung, which make smartphone processors and wireless network modem chips. It chose Intel, in part, to have more chip procurement options. Intel’s production will help “create a more diverse supply chain,” said N.S. Tsai, senior vice president at MediaTek. We look forward to building a long-term partnership.”

The ongoing global chip shortage in 2020, triggered by the COVID pandemic, has heightened concerns about the supply chain. Scarce processors have hampered deliveries of everything from Ford F-150 pickup trucks to Sony PlayStation 5 game consoles.

MediaTek will use an improved version of Intel’s decade-old 16-nanometer manufacturing process to make chips for home appliances and other IoT devices. By contrast, TSMC uses a more modern 4-nanometer manufacturing process to make MediaTek’s high-end product, the new Dimensity 9000 smartphone chip.

But IFS faces many challenges. Intel has historically had its own chip design tools and custom manufacturing processes for its own chip products. Adapting to external chip design required a profound business and operational transformation. And the chip foundry’s biggest customers are Intel’s direct competitors, such as AMD, NVIDIA, Apple and Qualcomm, who are likely to be uneasy about relying on Intel.

As an “anchor” for IFS, MediaTek is helping Intel learn how to build its business to compete with Samsung and TSMC, Thakur said.

For example, the company no longer relies on Intel’s own chip design tools, but has fully embraced software that others in the industry have long embraced. It physically isolated the factory floor space for its foundry customers and had a similarly separated computer system. Intel also began streamlining its own processes so outsiders could better understand them, and hired more than 70 employees from rival foundries, he said.

“Our ability to sit across from customers and talk in foundry language is greatly enhanced,” Thakur said.” The people we’re bringing in from the outside are helping us work as a foundry and are no longer the single Intel we were before.”

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