Intel Flexing Chip Manufacturing to Minimize Export-control Issues

By Agam Shah

October 25, 2022

A bill that released close to $50 billion to boost chip production in the U.S. was met with euphoria among chipmakers. But that joy was short-lived when the U.S. this month banned shipment of advanced chips to China.

The export controls are meant to choke China’s computing progress by denying access to U.S.-origin chip design software, silicon and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Nvidia, which has a strong presence in China, said the export controls would affect its GPU business as it wouldn’t be able to ship its A100 and H100 GPUs to the market.

The export controls complement the U.S. government’s efforts to strengthen the domestic semiconductor ecosystem via the US CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The bill opens up $39 billion in funding for companies like Intel, TSMC and Texas Instruments to open fabs on U.S. soil. About $11 billion will go to boost the R&D, education, and workforce development programs in the semiconductor sector and academia.

Intel executives at last month’s Innovation show acknowledged Chinese companies were important customers, and that it was building a manufacturing strategy to be geographically diverse. That plan will help it continue to serve customers in China.

The global expansion will help the company quickly adjust to geopolitical shifts, and continue the supply of chips without violating local regulations and restrictions. The regional supply chains will also act as failsafe to avoid chip shortages, and ensure multiple sources for materials and tools critical to chip manufacturing.

The U.S., EU and China view chips as an important pillar to advance economies in an increasingly digital world. The shortages exposed weaknesses in the global semiconductor supply chain with manufacturing largely concentrated in China, Taiwan and Korea. The prices of chips went up, and low-cost chips like power-management circuits led to U.S. and EU car companies shutting down production lines.

The chip shortage prompted the U.S. and EU to strengthen the regional chip supply chains. The U.S. passed the CHIPS and Science Act, and the European Commission is proposed its own CHIPS Act to stabilize the local semiconductor ecosystem. China and the EU have invested heavily in developing sovereign chips based on the open-source RISC-V architecture, which will cut reliance on proprietary Arm and U.S.-based x86 architecture.

Intel has restructured its manufacturing around geographic hubs in strategic areas. In September, Intel broke ground on $20 billion factories in Ohio, which CEO Pat Gelsinger called “Silicon Heartland.” The company is investing close to 17 billion euros for new factories in Magdeburg, Germany, which has been dubbed “Silicon Junction.” The company is also spending $7 billion for a new test and assembly facility in Malaysia, and is upgrading manufacturing facilities in Israel. India has been wooing Intel to open a factory, but the company has rebuffed offers.

The scope of Intel’s geographically distributed manufacturing was illustrated by a representative at the Intel Foundry Services booth at the Innovation show last month. Researchers or companies will be able to use Intel’s services to get chips made in its regional facilities while bypassing issues like export restrictions. Intel will adapt within the regional framework governing the design and deployment of chips.

For example, the European Processor Initiative – which is funded by the European Commission and is designing RISC-V architecture – will be able to get a chip made at Intel’s factory in Europe. Participants in the EPI, like SiPearl, have expressed interest in using advanced chip manufacturing facilities on European soil as the chips can be delivered quickly.

Intel is helping in the creation of a made-in-Europe chip, which boosts the company’s chances to receive factory subsidies from the European Commission’s EU Chips Act. Intel is already helping Barcelona Supercomputing Centre – which is a part of the European Processor Initiative – design chips based on RISC-V.

The export restrictions on China, which were announced shortly after Intel’s Innovation show, are wide-ranging, and executives at chip companies told HPCwire that there is a lot of confusion around the policies, and they are still scratching their heads on how it will apply to their operations.

But the manufacturing-specific limitations are clear: companies can’t export chips to China that are more advanced than 16nm or 14nm chips with 3D structures, 18nm DRAM chips, and NAND flash chips with more than 128 layers.

Beyond the limitations, Intel could work with Chinese organizations low-end chips out of their Asia facilities. But Intel may not be a manufacturing option for Chinese companies, who are making RISC-V CPU designs that require factories using U.S. technologies. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is developing a RISC-V server chip code-named XiangShan. Chinese cloud provider Alibaba is also backing the development of RISC-V chips.

Gelsinger is betting its long-term foundry strategy, called Integrated Device Manufacturing (IDM) 2.0, will be judged on the technological merits. The export restrictions could change with a new party in power after the 2024 U.S. election, and Gelsinger isn’t considering short-term distractions.

“We need to manage our cash carefully, but we are investing for the long term. That is our strategy for building the process technologies – for unquestioned leadership, five nodes and four years, as we’ve called it. We’re building the capacity to ramp those technologies,” Gelsinger said at a press conference during Innovation.

Signals of Intel’s geographic separation of manufacturing can be seen with a new consortium on chip production and design for U.S. national security applications.

The USMAG (United States Military, Aerospace and Government) Alliance, which was announced on Tuesday and is led by Intel Foundry Services, is designed to create processes that “meet the stringent design and production requirements” for U.S. military, aerospace and government customers, the chipmaker said in a release.

The alliance points to a larger effort to create political inroads to get more foundry business from U.S. customers. The program could be a pathway for similar programs it creates in Europe and China.

Header graphic: A photo from November 2021 shows employees working at Intel’s D1X factory in Hillsboro, Oregon. (Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire