Pat Gelsinger’s Role At Intel
When Pat took over as the CEO, Intel was struggling to compete against AMD. Their silicon manufacturing department had major problems leading them to develop sub-par CPUs. Within just 1 and a half years, Pat Gelsinger’s role became evident with launches such as Alder Lake and roadmaps towards smaller silicon nodes. Now, Intel’s teams are working in parallel across various processes. The 10nm (Intel 7) team is separate from the 7nm (Intel 4) team. We also see a new transistor technology termed as ‘RibbonFET‘ which was teased a while back. RibbonFET is the successor to Intel’s signature FinFET technology. Transistors based off this design could arrive as soon as Intel’s 18A & 20A nodes, however, we are uncertain as of now. ~Pat Gelsinger to TheVerge
The CHIPS Act
The CHIPS and Science act was passed in July and is valued at $52 Billion for chip manufacturing in the United States. Pat mentions that this act will greatly increase Intel’s share in the chip industry, partly because a large sum of that money will go to Intel. TSMC has a vital and a critical role in most of the semiconductors we use nowadays. However, due to tensions with China, relying on a single manufacturer is rather unsafe.
Intel’s Position in Foundry
Pat stressed the fact that Intel has been making silicon for a very long time. Intel has fabs all around the world, however, what they lag behind is in ‘foundry’. ~Pat Gelsinger to TheVerge CEOs of various fabless companies visited Intel’s Ohio site where Pat told them; Similarly, Intel also wishes to manufacture silicon for Qualcomm, NVIDIA and even Apple. Though they have not been in the foundry business, Intel does have the required setup/fabs. You’re going to put an AMD logo on the side of an Intel fab? “Hey, if they choose to manufacture with us, I will be thrilled to do that. It’s the right thing at that level. These are large investments, and they are important for technology — they spawn technical communities” ~TheVerge
Conclusion
Intel during its past few years, has been through many ups and downs. Currently, they aim to combat AMD in the CPU department while taking on NVIDIA in the GPU sector. Meteor Lake, or Intel’s 14th generation will make use of the Intel 4 process, which is revolutionary considering that the same company was stuck on 14nm for various generations. “I don’t know how much of it will win, but I want to win their business. I want to win Qualcomm’s business, and I want to win Apple’s business. We want to be that provider of a choice” ~Pat Gelsinger to TheVerge In addition to that, Meteor Lake will leverage the new Foveros design. This is essentially Intel’s transition from a monolithic based CPU to a multi-chiplet based model akin to AMD. Meteor Lake is planned for release sometime in 2023.
