Intel's foundry division held a press conference earlier to introduce the 12nm process node of Taiwan-based foundry United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), which will begin production at Intel's plant in Arizona, USA.

Intel's foundry priority is cutting-edge process nodes, such as the current Intel 3/4 nodes and Intel 18A, which will begin mass production later this year. At the same time, Intel has also begun to undertake wafer manufacturing for customers using mature process nodes, such as its Irish plant producing Intel 3/4 generation 16nm (Intel 16), and its Arizona plant in the United States producing UMC's 12nm.

The reason behind this is that demand for mature process nodes is expected to grow in the future, especially 12nm to 18nm process nodes.

Walter Ng, vice president of global business development at Intel Foundry, said: "Take the iPhone as an example. Its SoC and modem are manufactured using advanced process nodes such as 3nm and 4nm, while other parts such as the radio frequency (RF) part and analog circuits use semiconductors with 55nm to 130nm process nodes." He pointed out that mature process nodes are crucial even for digital devices such as smartphones.

In fact, this was also pointed out during the semiconductor supply shortage during the epidemic (2020-2022).

PCs have similar structures, and performance-demanding chips such as CPUs, GPUs, and memory all use cutting-edge process nodes. Since the supply and demand of these products are well guaranteed, there are no major problems.

However, problems occurred with the buffer chips installed on the memory modules and the microcontrollers installed on the motherboards, resulting in a shortage of motherboards and the inability to assemble personal computers.

In other words, in order to reliably manufacture smartphones and personal computers, the demand for mature process nodes used to manufacture these peripheral chips is surprisingly high. United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), a well-established Taiwanese foundry that is as famous as TSMC, excels in manufacturing at process nodes that meet such demand.

Founded in 1980, UMC was originally an integrated device manufacturer (IDM) that designed, manufactured, and sold its own products. However, in the 1990s, the company shifted to the foundry business, which remains its main business today.

UMC's main factories are located in Asia, including Taiwan, China, where its headquarters are located, mainland China, Singapore, and a factory in Kuwana City, Mie Prefecture, Japan, which it acquired from Fujitsu in 2019 after acquiring Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor.

However, as we all know, the semiconductor shortage caused by the epidemic has once again raised concerns about the high concentration of semiconductor supply chains (from manufacturing to assembly) in Asia. Western governments, especially from the perspective of their own national security, have begun to encourage semiconductor manufacturers to move their manufacturing bases to Europe and the United States through policies such as providing subsidies.

The Trump administration's second use of tariffs as a weapon in trade negotiations has also accelerated this trend, and complete set manufacturers are seriously considering moving their manufacturing supply chains to the United States or Europe. In other words, the trend of local production and consumption of semiconductors is becoming stronger.

ABOUT UMC

Founded in 1980, UMC was originally an integrated device manufacturer (IDM) that designs, manufactures, and sells its own products. However, in the 1990s, the company shifted to the foundry business, which remains its main business today.

UMC's main factories are located in Asia, including Taiwan, China, where it is headquartered, China, Singapore, and a factory in Kuwana City, Mie Prefecture, Japan, which it acquired from Fujitsu Mie Semiconductor in 2019.

However, as we all know, the semiconductor shortage caused by the epidemic has once again raised concerns about the high concentration of semiconductor supply chains (from manufacturing to assembly) in Asia. Western governments, especially from the perspective of their own national security, have begun to encourage semiconductor manufacturers to move their manufacturing bases to Europe and the United States through policies such as providing subsidies.

The Trump administration's second use of tariffs as a weapon in trade negotiations has also accelerated this trend, and complete set manufacturers are seriously considering moving their manufacturing supply chains to the United States or Europe. In other words, the trend of local production and consumption of semiconductors is becoming stronger.

UMC's manufacturing base is highly concentrated in Asia, and it needs to change this situation in some way, which is why it decided to cooperate with Intel foundry.

Walter Ng of Intel foundry said: "We will bring the 12nm process node developed by UMC in its Tainan plant (UMC Fab12A) to our plant in Arizona for production. We call this approach 'Copy Smart'."

Usually, Intel will launch a process node at its parent plant D1X or another plant in Hillsboro, Oregon, and then copy it exactly to other plants, even including the location of the toilet, which is called "exact copy".

In contrast, in this cooperation with UMC, because the structure of UMC's plant is different from that of Intel's plant, it is difficult to copy it completely, so the company decided to introduce the production line in the form of "smart copy", which means that the production line will be adjusted after copying.

The UMC wafers produced by Intel's foundry will be sold to customers by UMC, and the business entity will still be UMC. Intel will participate mainly by lending UMC some available space and human resources.

While no details were revealed about the business model, it is likely that UMC will pay a portion of its sales to Intel.

"Right now, the mainstream of these mature nodes is around 20 to 28 nanometers, but we believe that the future will shift to 12 to 17 nanometers, etc. By 2028, the potential market will exceed $20 billion, especially the demand for logic and wireless will continue to grow," said Tianjing Lin, president of UMC America. To achieve this goal, the two companies cooperated to produce UMC 12nm at Intel's Arizona plant.

Lin said:"The benefit to customers is obvious: they will be able to produce high-performance 12nm chips for next-generation products in the United States. The benefit to UMC is that they can provide our technology to American customers. And the benefit to Intel foundries is that they will gain expertise in providing mature process nodes to customers, which is something they have rarely tried before." He said this is a win-win situation for all three parties: customers, UMC and Intel foundries.

In addition to the cooperation with UMC, Intel has also begun to produce Intel 16 (16nm-class FinFET node) for Taiwan MediaTek at its Irish plant (Intel's main plant for 3/4 nodes).

According to Intel, the decision to produce Intel 16 was made after listening to "customer feedback" that MediaTek wanted a mature, inexpensive process node. If there is customer demand, including demand for UMC's 12nm, Intel plans to expand production using mature process nodes at its factories in Europe and the United States.

Mr. Lin said that since the announcement of cooperation with UMC (UMC) on 12nm process in January last year, engineers from both companies have been working on launching the production line. In addition, the company also plans to release version 0.5 of the development kit required for chip physical development using an EDA tool called PDK (Process Design Kit) exclusively to customers planning to adopt the product in October this year. The widely distributable version 1.0 is expected to be released in April 2026, and mass production is expected to begin in January 2027.

Source: This article is translated from eetjpnm?

Reference link https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/2012032.html

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