14 DAY TRIAL // Intel seems to have a lot riding on its upcoming 22nm manufacturing process, the company just announcing that it wants to invest $9 billion for building and equipping a high volume 22nm facility as they move towards a new production model that will rely on using four cutting edge fabs instead of three as it’s the case now.
The move was announced during the company's latest conference call with financial analysts by Stacy Smith, chief financial officer at Intel.
"In support of expected strong unit growth in our core businesses and the movement of graphics transistors to our leading edge process technology, we are forecasting an increase in capital spending to $9 billion as we build and equip an incremental high volume manufacturing factory at 22nm," said the company's rep.
This change in manufacturing strategy will help Intel transition its desktop and server processor lines, as well as various other chips, to the lower power 22nm fabrication process more rapidly than before.
Previously, Atom CPUs moved to the newer manufacturing nodes half a year later than the rest of the company's processor lineup.
However, this isn't something that Intel can afford anymore considering how successful AMD's Brazos platform proved to be in the short time that passes since its launch.
“Our 22nm process will be the foundation for growing PC and server segments, as well as a broad family of Atom-based SoCs, serving smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and other embedded devices," said Paul Otellini, Intel's CEO.
According to the Xbit Labs website, the company will presumably start manufacturing chips using the 22nm node in Q4 of 2011, although it doesn't want to make any official promises concerning mass production right now.
The upcoming 22nm fabrication process will be used for building the Ivy Bridge processor as well as for the company's Knights Corner accelerator based on the MIC (many Intel core) architecture, derived from the Larrabee project.
Intel has already confirmed that it has been working 22nm chip samples.