Text/Di Lin Review/Zi Yang Proofreader/Zhi Qiu
On February 24, Global Tech news, Intel announced a product and process evolution map.
According to the content of the figure, the company is very aggressive in the upgrading of advanced processes, not only plans to upgrade the 5th generation process within 4 years, but also to apply a new generation of EUV lithography machines from 2025.
11.4 billion snapped up EUV lithography machines
The next generation of EUV lithography machine is the Dutch lithography giant ASML previously released NA 0.55 EUV lithography machine, ASML in the release of related financial reports at the same time as the announcement of Intel's order news.
The author understands that ASML's new generation of EUV lithography machine costs as much as $300 million, about 1.9 billion yuan a piece, it is worth mentioning that Intel did not very restrained to order only one.
It is reported that in the past 4 years, Intel has actually ordered 6 SETS of NA 0.55 EUV lithography machines from ASML, which means that Intel has spent at least 11.4 billion yuan just to prepare lithography equipment for process upgrades.
Such a large investment, so that many people concerned about Intel are worried about it, after all, due to the impact of many factors, ASML's new generation of EUV lithography machine mass production and delivery time may be delayed.
However, for this issue, Intel is not worried, the company also said that even if the delay in delivery is not afraid, there is also Plan B inside.
In addition to spending heavily on equipment in the face of the risk of jumping tickets of a new generation of EUV lithography machines, Intel has also launched a large-scale capacity expansion operation around the world.
According to Intel's various actions since 2021, the company has successively formulated plans to build new fabs in the United States, Europe, China and other countries or regions when the lack of cores continues to spread.
As for the reason why Intel's actions are so frequent, it is naturally to land the IDM 2.0 strategy, but also to overtake TSMC and regain the company's supremacy in the global wafer foundry field.
Mass production of 2nm in 2024
Before the release of the IDM 2.0 strategy, Intel's advanced process process was far behind TSMC, and even at present, the company had not yet achieved mass production of the 7nm process.
In contrast, TSMC has mastered the 7nm, 5nm, 4nm process has also achieved mass production and commercialization, and the 3nm process mass production plan is carried out as scheduled, and it is not surprising that 2022 will be successfully unveiled.
In addition, TSMC has also carried out in-depth research and development for ultra-high-precision processes such as 2nm and 1nm.
Since it wants to regain its dominance, Intel naturally will not only work improving process capacity. Therefore, Intel will buy the next generation of EUV lithography machines in advance and develop a very aggressive process iteration plan.
On February 20, Intel CEO Kissinger announced in an interview with Taiwan's Economic Daily that the company's 2nm chip will achieve mass production in 2024.
From the perspective of time nodes, Intel's 2nm is earlier than TSMC, and if it goes well, it may surpass the professional wafer foundry giant that has ranked first in the industry for many years.
Can Intel overtake TSMC?
But in the case of backward process development and backward production capacity, can Intel really surpass TSMC in a short period of time? The author believes that the difficulty is not small.
First of all, this requires Intel to inject a lot of resources and energy into the wafer foundry business.
You know, one of the reasons why TSMC ranks first in the industry is because of the company's specificity. However, Intel is taking the IDM route, the business verticality is not high, I am afraid it is not easy to make rapid progress in the foundry of high-end advanced chip processes that originally have high requirements for enterprise strength.
Second, Intel's process performance requires a long customer validation time.
This means that even if Intel chases the platform backlog on the process node, it may also cause pressure on the capital chain because there are not many orders. In addition, Intel also needs to face the gap between it and TSMC in the capacity of EUV lithography machines.
Of course, Intel also has a certain chance of winning, after all, the company is backed by the United States, and the United States is restructuring the local chip manufacturing industry, Intel may enjoy a lot of dividends.
In your opinion, what are the odds of Intel overtaking TSMC?