Intel to spend $6 billion on a 10nm fab in Israel

Intel to invest in 10nm Fabs

| Source: gigaom.com Author: Mark Campbell

Intel to spend $6 billion on a 10nm fab in Israel

Intel will make the largest-ever investment ever made in Israel by a foreign firm, in exchange for tax concessions and a government grant. The purpose is to upgrade its Fab in Kiryat Gat to gain manufacturing capacity for next-generation 10nm chips.

Israel’s Finance Ministry has given the go-ahead to the $6 billion upgrade of Intel’s chip fabrication plant in Israel, for which the Israeli government will grant the U.S. firm $300 million over five years and give extra-low corporate tax rate to the company for the next decade. For Israel, the fab upgrade is set to create 1,000 more jobs by 2023.

At present Intel’s fab in Kiryat Gat produces various products using 32nm process technology, so this upgrade will provide a very large upgrade in process tech for the Fab.

For Intel, this will help provide a way for them to combat its nemesis ARM, whose chip architecture is generally less power-hungry and is found in most mobile devices today. Intel is currently making the move to their 14nm process for their next generation chips, so this investment will secure Intel's capability to further shrink their process technology.

Particularly if wearable computing takes off, smaller more power efficient chips will continue to be the way forward for Intel and it's competitors. 10nm is very close to where the properties of silicon start to break down, at least when applied to electronics, this will make it necessitating to use different materials when we eventually need to break past 10nm barrier.

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