Intel To Assemble Coffee Lake CPUs In Chengdu Plant

In a product change notice, Intel stated that it will begin assembling Coffee Lake desktop CPUs at its plant located in Chengdu, China.

Since their launch, Coffee Lake desktop CPUs have been somewhat limited in availability. In an effort to help alleviate supply issues, Intel notified its customers that they will soon begin also receiving parts assembled in China. The change is effective for i5-8400, i5-8600K, i7-8700, and i7-8700K CPUs.

To be clear, this notification refers only to the assembly and test portion of the manufacturing process for these CPUs and not to the fabrication of the physical processor dies. Intel doesn’t limit the fabrication of specific chips to specific fabs, so the physical dies for these CPUs can already be coming from more than one place. Assembly and test for these CPUs, however, has so far been limited to Intel’s Malaysia plant. The addition of the Chengdu plant could imply that the assembly and binning process is actually a bottleneck in Coffee Lake’s production.

An interesting point in Intel’s notice is the reference to its Copy Exactly! methodology of manufacturing. This essentially strives to make it so that Intel’s products are exactly the same regardless of where they’re manufactured, which means that new Coffee Lake CPUs binned in Chengdu shouldn’t be any different from current ones. Given past forum debates, though, we wouldn’t be surprised if we soon see winners and losers of the silicon lottery picking favorites.

  • derekullo
    With easy access to resources and altitude from the Himalayas, Coffee Lake is sure to be the most delectable cpu ever!

    Let us hope there is no 3pm crash ...
    Reply
  • kancaras
    short and straight to the point article with good insights, i like it!
    Reply
  • berezini
    Malaysia assembled cpu's will cost more from vendors?
    Reply
  • berezini
    I really want to see someone post same model comparison just to make sure there is no difference giving its assembled in CHINA.
    Reply
  • Co BIY
    With two plants packaging these .... where are they ?

    Just got a Holiday Flyer from Dell. No Coffee Lake anywhere. So OEMs haven't gotten them in time for holiday products. I'm not sure the OEMs will be interested in paying more for the Z chipsets.

    I have no doubt that a chip packaged in China will be every bit as perfect as one packaged in Malaysia. For the large multinationals quality is about focus and priority not production location.
    Reply
  • Simon Anderson
    Just got back from Chengdu... awesome place. Very modern, very delicious! I'm sure their chips will be just fine :)
    Reply
  • Nintendork
    Ryzen 5 1600/1600X and be happy with a long lasting platform.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    20390734 said:
    I really want to see someone post same model comparison just to make sure there is no difference giving its assembled in CHINA.

    You know what assembly is, right? That's the process where they take the CPU die, that is probably manufactured in Arizona, Oregon or Ireland (those are the only three sites that currently support 14nm Fabrication with FAB42 in Chandler being the first 450mm wafer and 7nm FAB) and they combine it with the PCB and IHS. Nothing else happens. Well probably the packaging.

    Even then where those will be distributed is anyone's guess. The US might never get a Chengdu manufactured CPU.

    20397437 said:
    Ryzen 5 1600/1600X and be happy with a long lasting platform.

    No such thing. The platform itself will get older and you will eventually want to upgrade the motherboard. I do it with every build because there is no reason to try and keep an aging platform around a modern chip.
    Reply