Rebooting the Foundry Model Mindset

As the entire world becomes digital and technology is increasingly central to every aspect of human existence, the market we play in is changing. This requires a reboot around our foundry model mindset – and ultimately what will differentiate leaders of the future from those simply comfortable with status quo.

We are building out a Systems Foundry, which is an expansion of Wafer Foundry, driven by a combination of technological demands, economics, and fundamental physics. It comprises four components:

1)?????The traditional wafer aspect (what everyone currently thinks of as traditional foundry) – all based on Moore’s Law

2)?????Packaging

3)?????Software

4)?????Chiplet Standard

The systems foundry involves engaging with customers at multiple levels, from basic wafer manufacturing all the way up to helping define and implement their desired system architecture.

Moore’s Law and the Magic of Silicon

As advanced semiconductors enable new levels of human achievement, the world’s need for compute exponentially increases at an inverse ratio of size to power. That’s Moore’s Law in a nutshell – the fundamental driver for the first component of systems foundry.

Since our founding, Intel has thrived on the relentless pursuit of semiconductor invention and innovation as described by Moore’s Law. It has provided the technological backbone behind the greatest period of human innovation and wealth creation in history — and we are still right in the thick of it.

Silicon is magic; it’s a super versatile element with all the right properties for transistor needs. As we continued to scale down over the years, as prescribed by Moore’s Law, we’ve added additional elements into the mix – creating sophisticated silicides for transistors, and back end of line metallization schemes.

Today, our end-products include around a quarter of the periodic table. More are used in processing and manufacturing – up to a third of all the elements. We still have tremendous opportunity for the future – perhaps looking at 2D materials or novel types of dielectrics.

As stewards of Moore’s Law, Intel will be relentless in our path to innovate in the magic of silicon. And we will not rest until the periodic table is exhausted.

Packaging’s Day of Reckoning

Of course, it’s not just about processing. Increasingly we need to look at packaging– the second part of Systems Foundry.

Moore’s Law enabled us to build more complex systems amid growing demand for applications specific compute. Yet Gordon himself understood the importance of packaging and said as much in his original paper. He was able to foresee this day of “reckoning,” where it would be necessary to build larger systems out of smaller functions to deliver customized heterogenous solutions.

We are now in the advanced packaging era, which involves gains in transistor density delivered by packaging. 2D and 3D stacking technologies give architects and designers the tools to further increase the number of transistors per device and will contribute to the scaling needed for Moore’s Law.

Software Defined; Silicon Enhanced

Intel CTO Greg Lavender has often said, “software is the soul of the machine.” And nearly all our customers benefit from the extensive software optimizations that are tuned to the differentiated features in our hardware. Stable software interfaces let you develop your solutions ahead of product availability.

Today’s solutions comprise silicon plus software and SaaS – the fourth component of systems foundry. Intel has the experience and ability in silicon plus software. To bring the systems approach to life, we must lead with a software-first mindset at every layer.

In 2000, spending on semiconductors was larger than the spend on software. Today the spending on software is nearly twice that of semiconductors and accelerating! Trends show that ratio could be nearly 3x by 2026.

Chiplet Revolution

Finally, a platform transformation enabling new customer and partner solutions with an open “chiplet” ecosystem, is the fourth component of our systems foundry. There is flexibility and advantage from disaggregation and the use of advanced packaging.

We want to set a single industry standard, so earlier this year, Intel joined forces with Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), AMD, Arm, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to launch the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) consortium. The UCIe consortium is focused on a single goal: creating an open ecosystem for enabling chiplets designed and manufactured on different process technologies by different vendors to work together when integrated with advanced packaging technologies.

A systems foundry approach will facilitate the kind of holistic solutions required to overcome fundamental limits and meet the industry’s insatiable demand for more semiconductors.

With the systems foundry model, Intel Foundry Services (IFS) will offer secure supply, open platforms, and composable solutions through semiconductor chips, advanced packaging, and system software. Dr. Randhir Thakur, President, Intel Foundry Services, also recently shared insights and additional details about the future benefits of an Open Systems Foundry approach.

The previously existing model served the industry well. As innovation evolves, we see the rack has collapsed into a system and the system has collapsed into an advanced package. We must evolve alongside. Morphing the standard wafer foundry into a systems foundry will further empower us all to solve challenging problems and help develop world-changing technology that improves lives.