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—Part of an ongoing EE Times series: A Vulnerable U.S. Electronics Supply Chain. Previous parts include:
Intel Foundry Services (IFS) recently added customers and suppliers to a new ecosystem that will make chips for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) weapons systems. IFS will help close a gap in the DoD’s tech vulnerabilities while also strengthening Intel’s appeal for some CHIPS Act subsidies, executives and analysts told EE Times.
Defense contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman are the latest to join IFS in the second phase of the DoD’s Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes—Commercial (RAMP-C) program. The government project aims to create a U.S.-based commercial ecosystem to make leading-edge custom chips and other products essential for DoD systems.
“With the addition of Boeing and Northrop Grumman, we are very excited that the defense industrial base, which normally mostly uses mature technology, has the ability to move to the latest and greatest, industry-leading technology at a much earlier timeline,” IFS VP Kapil Wadhera told EE Times.
The DoD’s ability to respond to a surge in wartime demand for chips used in advanced weaponry and systems has been hampered by an over-reliance on mature semiconductors and impeded by much larger foundry customers like Apple that have crowded the DoD out of the supply chain. Apple buys almost all of the world’s most advanced chips, made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
IBM, Nvidia, Microsoft and Qualcomm are existing RAMP-C partners with IFS, and they are designing test chips using Intel’s 18A process technology that will be “manufacturing ready” in the second half of next year, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a recent earnings conference call. That node is roughly equivalent to the 2-nm process that industry leader TSMC will start in 2025, according to a July earnings call.
“Most of these designs take about six to nine months before they can tape out to a test chip,” Wadhera said. “They [the RAMP-C customers] will decide their timelines. In phase two [of RAMP-C], we expect that customers are going to be running a lot of their test chips, getting familiar with the technology [and] seeing the results. In phase three, they will be building commercial products on Intel 18A technology.”
If the RAMP-C program is successful, the DoD will, for the first time in decades, have weapons systems made with the world’s most advanced semiconductors.
“As we retarget toward new potential adversaries, they [DoD] realized that they do really need state-of-the-art capability,” Geremy Freifeld, Draper technology portfolio leader, told EE Times. “The demand for state-of-the-art microelectronics is going to increase very quickly.”
Draper on July 31 said it is joining IFS as a partner to design chips for DoD contractors.
“We take DoD … system capability and do the functionality decomposition of the mission capability down to what electronic components are necessary,” Freifeld said. “The DoD doesn’t say, ‘I want a processor with this much memory and an interface with this much bandwidth.’ They say, ‘I want my weapon system to do this.’”
Stalled Tower acquisition
One of the key issues for IFS is Intel’s acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, which regulators in China have delayed for more than a year.
Tower’s 2021 revenue from fabs located in Israel, Europe, the U.S. and Japan was worth about $1.5 billion, former IFS president Randhir Thakur told EE Times last year. Tower can add strong display and sensor technology to the IFS portfolio, he said. Moreover, Tower operates solely as a foundry, unlike Intel, Semiconductor Advisors president Robert Maire told EE Times.
“They understand what it’s like to be a foundry and what it is to provide service,” Maire said of Tower. “China is obviously using approval as a lever or strategic weapon. I think it’s more like 60/40, 70/30 that it gets done.”
Delivery under SHIP begins
In April, Intel announced the delivery of the first multi-chip package prototypes created under the State-of-the-Art Heterogeneous Integrated Packaging (SHIP) program for the DoD.
The SHIP program provides the DoD access to Intel’s advanced heterogeneous packaging technologies, including embedded multi-die interconnect bridge (EMIB), 3D Foveros and Co-EMIB. Access allows the DoD to use advanced packaging and chiplet libraries that will accelerate prototyping, testing and incorporation of advanced devices into systems.
“We want to make sure that, in the SHIP program, we are able to provide the support that the government needs from our factories in Arizona,” Wadhera said. “We’re working with not only the chiplets that we offer but also other partners in the semiconductor industry system,” including Texas Instruments.
EDA partners on tap
Wadhera wants customers to have a “frictionless” ability to migrate their devices from any other foundry to IFS. He said he’s making sure the IFS technology is easy to use.
“We’ve been working with the ecosystem—for example, the EDA vendors Synopsys and Cadence—so that their tools and flows are optimized for Intel technology,” he said.
Intel and Synopsys this week announced an agreement for the development an IP portfolio on the Intel 3 and 18A nodes for IFS customers.
Wadhera noted still more IFS alliances in IP, ASIC design services and the cloud:
“We’ve also created a U.S. military aerospace and government alliance. Our partners who are building solutions for the government can be part of that alliance and get the benefits to be able to have early access to technology collateral, be part of the trainings. All those alliances will help Boeing, Northrop Grumman and, I would expect, other defense industrial-based customers.”
Benefits for both sides outlined
The IFS/DoD partnership is a “win-win” for both sides, Maire said:
“Intel gets more business, and right now, their factories are running a relatively low utilization, which means low profitability. The DoD gets a much more advanced and much more secure facility than they have now.”
Up to now, the closest thing to a secure, U.S.-based, advanced chip supplier that the DoD has is GlobalFoundries, Maire added. Part of GlobalFoundries’ supply chain is in Dresden, Germany, and the company’s most advanced process technology is 14 nm, he said. That node is generations behind the most advanced 3 nm that TSMC and Samsung make.
The IFS/DoD partnership will also help Intel lock up CHIPS Act funds this year, Maire said:
“This gives them another reason why they should be given CHIPS Act money. This is helping the U.S. defense industry, helping onshore stuff that would currently potentially go offshore.”
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