Intel Oregon Fab Expansion Milestone: First Chipmaking Tool Rolls In
August 9, 2021 | IntelEstimated reading time: 1 minute
For most people, a tool is something you hold in your hand: pliers, hammer, screwdriver. Inside an Intel chip factory, a tool is a whole different deal. Fab tools are huge and hugely costly and take entire teams to muscle into place and install.
As Intel aggressively ramps its worldwide manufacturing footprint, a construction milestone recently passed at Intel’s Ronler Acres factory in Hillsboro, Oregon.
At the company’s massive $3 billion Mod3 factory expansion, the first tool rolled in. The honor went to a thin film deposition tool. It arrived not in a leather tool belt, but aboard two semitractor-trailers. Once completed and hooked up, it will weigh 10 tons. And by the time the Mod3 project is done in about six months, the thin film deposition tool will be joined by more than a dozen like it. A typical Intel fab, once built out, is stuffed with about 1,200 chipmaking tools, many of them costing millions of dollars apiece.
To satisfy the mushrooming global demand for computer chips, Intel is building or expanding factories in Arizona, New Mexico, Ireland, Israel and Costa Rica. And CEO Pat Gelsinger has told the tech world to stay tuned for news of more Intel fabs around the world.
Suggested Items
US Department of Defense Selects Intel Foundry for Phase Three of RAMP-C
04/23/2024 | IntelThe U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded Intel Foundry Phase Three of its Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program.
Intel Gaudi, Xeon and AI PC Accelerate Meta Llama 3 GenAI Workloads
04/22/2024 | Intel CorporationMeta launched Meta Llama 3, its next-generation large language model (LLM). Effective on launch day, Intel has validated its AI product portfolio for the first Llama 3 8B and 70B models across Intel® Gaudi® accelerators, Intel® Xeon® processors, Intel® Core™ Ultra processors and Intel® Arc™ graphics.
Intel Brings AI-Platform Innovation to Life at the Olympic Games
04/18/2024 | BUSINESS WIREIntel announced its plans for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024. Bringing AI Everywhere, Intel will implement artificial intelligence technology powered by Intel processors on the world’s biggest stage.
SMT Prospects and Perspectives: AI Opportunities, Challenges, and Possibilities, Part 1
04/17/2024 | Dr. Jennie Hwang -- Column: SMT Perspectives and ProspectsIn this installment of my artificial intelligence (AI) series, I will touch on the key foundational technologies that propel and drive the development and deployment of AI, with special consideration of electronics packaging and assembly.
Intel Breaks Down Proprietary Walls to Bring Choice to Enterprise GenAI Market
04/10/2024 | IntelAt Intel Vision, Intel introduces the Intel® Gaudi® 3 AI accelerator, which delivers 4x AI compute for BF16, 1.5x increase in memory bandwidth, and 2x networking bandwidth for massive system scale out compared to its predecessor – a significant leap in performance and productivity for AI training and inference on popular large language models (LLMs) and multimodal models.