Intel postpones its $200 billion new fab construction plan

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger shared the vision of “IDM 2.0” at an event in March this year and created Intel Foundry Services, which is a major innovation in Intel’s IDM model. In order to accelerate the realization of the IDM 2.0 strategy, Intel will substantially expand its production capacity. It has previously invested approximately $20 billion to build two new wafer fabs in the Ocotillo Park in Arizona, USA.

Image: Intel

For Intel’s huge capacity expansion plan, the $20 billion investment is only a small part of it. In fact, Intel’s original planned overall investment scale will exceed $200 billion, including building new fabs in the United States and Europe and upgrading related facilities around the world. For example, Intel recently invested $7 billion to build a new chip packaging and testing plant in Malaysia to strengthen its global semiconductor production capacity.

Intel’s $200 billion plan was originally scheduled to announce specific plans at the end of this year, mainly involving large-scale new projects in the United States and Europe. However, according to TomsHardware reports, Intel has currently postponed the time to early 2022, which may involve complex problems encountered in the project, and many factors need to be considered, such as this large-scale investment involves government subsidies and tax incentives, and other policies.

Intel has previously announced that it will build a semiconductor manufacturing center in the United States. The new manufacturing base will have 6 to 8 semiconductor manufacturing modules, which use Intel’s most advanced manufacturing technology (4nm or 3nm process) and chip packaging (such as EMIB and Foveros packaging technology) facilities, and there will be a dedicated power plant. The cost of each semiconductor manufacturing module will be between $10 billion and $15 billion, and Pat Gelsinger said he plans to invest $100 billion.