Intel’s First Excessive-Quantity Foveros Packaging Facility, Fab 9, Begins Operations
Intel this week has began manufacturing at Fab 9, the corporate’s newest and most superior chip packaging plant. Becoming a member of Intel’s rising assortment of amenities in New Mexico, Fab 9 is tasked with packaging chips utilizing Intel’s Foveros technology, which is at the moment used to construct the corporate’s newest shopper Core Extremely (Meteor Lake) processors and Knowledge Heart Max GPU (Ponte Vecchio) for synthetic intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) functions.
The fab close to Rio Rancho, New Mexico, cost Intel $3.5 billion to construct and equip. The excessive price ticket of the fab – believed to be the only most costly superior packaging facility ever constructed – underscores simply how critical Intel is concerning its superior packaging applied sciences and manufacturing capability. Intel’s product roadmaps name for making vital use of multi-die/chiplet designs going ahead, and matched with Intel Foundry Providers prospects’ wants, the corporate is getting ready for a big leap in manufacturing volumes for Foveros, EMIB, and different superior packaging methods.
Intel’s Foveros is a die-to-die stacking expertise that makes use of a base die produced utilizing the corporate’s low-power 22FFL fabrication course of and chiplet dies stacked on prime of it. The bottom die can act like an interconnection between the dies it hosts, or can combine sure I/O or logic. The present era Foveros helps bumps which might be as small as 36 microns and may allow as much as 770 connections per sq. millimeter, however because the bumps turn out to be 25 and 18 microns finally, the expertise will enhance connection density and efficiency (each when it comes to bandwidth and when it comes to supported energy supply).
A Foveros base die will be as large as 600 mm2, however for functions that require base dies bigger than 600 mm2 (corresponding to these used for datacenter merchandise), Intel can sew a number of base dies collectively utilizing co-EMIB packaging expertise.
Lastly coming into full manufacturing, the brand new Fab 9 (which has inherited its identify from what was as soon as a 6-inch wafer lithography fab) is slated to be Intel’s crown jewel for Foveros chip packaging for not less than the subsequent couple of years. Whereas the corporate has “superior packaging” capabilities in Malaysia (PGAT) as effectively, these amenities are at the moment solely tooled for EMIB manufacturing, that means that every one of Intel’s Foveros packaging is happening on its New Mexico campus. As Intel’s first high-volume Foveros packaging facility, the extra capability ought to drastically increase Intel’s complete Foveros packaging throughput, although the corporate is not offering particular quantity figures.
With Intel’s Fab 11x immediately subsequent door, the pair of amenities are additionally Intel’s first co-located packaging superior packaging web site, permitting Intel to chop down on what number of dies they must import from different Intel fabs. Although as Fab 11x will not be an Intel 4 facility, within the case of Meteor Lake it’s only appropriate for producing the 22FFL base die. Intel remains to be importing the Intel 4-built CPU die (Oregon & Eire), in addition to the TSMC-manufactured graphics, SoC, and I/O dies (Taiwan).
“Immediately, we rejoice the opening of Intel’s first high-volume semiconductor operations and the one U.S. manufacturing facility producing the world’s most superior packaging options at scale,” mentioned Keyvan Esfarjani, Intel govt vice chairman and chief world operations officer. “This cutting-edge expertise units Intel aside and offers our prospects actual benefits in efficiency, type issue and adaptability in design functions, all inside a resilient provide chain. Congratulations to the New Mexico workforce, the complete Intel household, our suppliers, and contractor companions who collaborate and relentlessly push the boundaries of packaging innovation.”
