A First Look at Intel's 14nm Fab 42 Manufacturing Facility

Construction of Fab 42, the company's first volume 14 nm factory, has begun in Chandler, Arizona and has been documented in an article in the Financial Times and a slideshow published by analysts at VLSI Research. The massive new fab will be Intel's first factory to exceed a construction cost of $5 billion and somewhat follows the concept of the praised D1X development Fab in Hillsboro, Oregon. Fab 42 will also use the "copy exactly" approach, in which the company aims to recreate the conditions of the D1X development fab in a volume production facility in extreme detail, including interior temperature and air quality, to achieve the production yields delivered by D1X.

What makes Fab 42 special is that it is a modular fab like D1X (which is separated in a manufacturing, development and research portions).However, Fab 42 is more advanced and substantially larger than D1X. The new plant is also the first volume production facility that is compatible with 450 mm wafers, which offer a substantial economic advantage over the current 300 mm generation that Intel launched with its 130 nm processor generation in 2001.

Fab 42 is due to go online sometime next year.

  • rpmrush
    And this is why intel will be a top dog in the mobile sector in a couple of years. 5 Billion+ for the plant! They are not afraid to invest heavily. Intel is a BEAST!
    Reply
  • hardcore_gamer
    Intel is taking on these guys:

    hot electron effect
    impact ionization
    velocity saturation
    drain induced barrier lowering
    surface scattering
    punchthrough
    sub-threshold conduction
    Reply
  • eklerus
    omg Intel look at the cpu die size in the 3rd picture it's to big for me ^^
    Reply
  • egidem
    And this is precisely why anyone that continues to doubt or underestimate Intel's prowess is a fool. Something to take from all this is that Intel is not afraid to heavily invest or spend large amounts of money on R&D. If they need to invade the mobile market sector and need to spend $5B on building their facility to make those 14nm processors, then so be it!

    I'm curious to see what this situation between Intel and ARM will be like in say 5 years from now. Something tells me that history will repeat itself but this time Intel will be owning ARM.
    Reply
  • GreaseMonkey_62
    I didn't know Intel had plants in the US. Starting to make me consider them more. Come on AMD, pull out a big win this year.
    Reply
  • dontknownotsure
    eklerusomg Intel look at the cpu die size in the 3rd picture it's to big for me ^^
    its next step, 30m process
    Reply
  • nikorr
    Can't wait.
    Reply
  • ojas
    I wonder, does this mean that haswell will have a mid 2013 launch?

    Sandy B -> Jan 2011
    Ivy B -> April 2012
    Haswell -> July 2013 ???
    Reply
  • neoverdugo
    The only 2 things intel needs to do are:
    1) Drop its price tag
    2) Retire the x86 and create a new architecture

    Anything else?
    Reply
  • digiex
    2) Retire the x86 and create a new architecture

    Did you ever met Itanium?
    Reply