Sixteen miles north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a chip factory called Fab 9 has been reborn. Once home to raccoons and badgers, now it’s a key player in Intel's ambitious plan to dominate advanced chip packaging for AI.
The company is pouring billions into this facility, with support from the US CHIPS Act, to compete against giants like TSMC. CEO Lip-Bu Tan claims its packaging could be a ‘very big differentiator’, even though the current projections suggest it could rake in over a billion dollars per year before wafer revenue starts rolling in.
Intel is negotiating deals with tech behemoths Google and Amazon, who both make custom chips but outsource parts of their fabrication. This move could be Intel's game-changer, or just another tech strategy that falls flat.
The term ‘advanced packaging’ didn’t even exist a decade ago. It involves stacking multiple chiplets to maximize processing power in limited space. As AI demands more computing muscle, Intel hopes this will help it grab a larger slice of the growing market.
