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  • Intel’s CEO Says AI Is the Key to the Company’s Comeback

    Intel’s CEO Says AI Is the Key to the Company’s Comeback

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    When veteran engineer and executive Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel as CEO in 2021, the once-great chipmaker was in a slump. After failing to adapt to the mobile era and then missing several steps in cutting-edge microprocessor manufacturing, it was now also falling behind in supplying chips to feed the tech industry’s growing hunger for artificial intelligence.

    With optimism that at times seemed reckless, Gelsinger promised that Intel would make an epic comeback. He vowed to shake up its sleepy corporate culture, refocus on core engineering, and deliver a revitalized manufacturing plan that would put rivals TSMC and Samsung on notice.

    This week, Gelsinger declared Intel’s comeback plan well and truly on track. He announced a rebrand of the company’s “foundry” business, which manufactures chips designed by other companies, saying that Intel’s latest manufacturing process would later this year yield silicon chips as efficient and capable as ones from TSMC. Microsoft is the first big customer for this new chipmaking technology—a key coup for Intel as it tries to convince the industry that it can offer competitive products suited to the age of AI.

    Pat Gelsinger spoke to WIRED senior writer Will Knight about Intel’s AI reboot over Zoom from his home in Santa Clara, California. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

    Will Knight: You announced this week that Intel will relaunch its business that manufactures chips on behalf of other companies as an “AI-era system foundry.” What does that mean?

    Pat Gelsinger: I began Intel’s strategy two plus years ago, and for the company, generative AI has been this unexpected surge. This has been the land of Nvidia, but we’re the one company that actually has the opportunity to participate in 100 percent of the AI market. We know how to connect up networks and memory and [provide] supply chains and all of these other elements that we’re finding customers are super excited to take advantage of.

    Speaking of the AI surge, what did you make of reports suggesting OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman wants to raise $7 trillion to develop and manufacture chips needed to guarantee progress in AI?

    My first reaction was, that’s a mind-bogglingly big number. And then I had to do the math. Today, the biggest AI models were generated on about 10,000 GPUs. The belief is there that we probably need to be 10 million for the biggest AI models that get produced in the future.

    We’re already saying we may spend a couple billion dollars training the most advanced models today. Plus, the math in the $7 trillion also includes power and data centers.

    This week you said Intel is on track to deliver its new “18A” manufacturing process, which will compete with TSMC’s best offerings. What else are you doing to regain an edge?

    The whole industry is pursuing this next generation transistor, what we call ribbonFET. I think everybody’s [asking] who’s going to produce the next best transistor on the planet.

    But the thing that everybody is giving us credit for is backside power, this new way of delivering power into the device, which gives you better current resistance performance, but it’s also improving the density of the chip. That means the same wafer, instead of producing 100 chips, can produce 120 chips. It’s a huge value proposition.

    You announced Microsoft as a customer of your foundry business. But Intel previously fell behind the competition in this market. How will you convince customers that things are different this time?

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  • Intel’s AI Reboot Is the Future of US Chipmaking

    Intel’s AI Reboot Is the Future of US Chipmaking

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    Gina Raimondo, the US secretary of commerce, spoke at Intel’s event today and compared the US government’s current focus on revitalizing its chip industry to the space race of the 1960s. “The fact that we are so overly dependent on a couple of countries in Asia that we need for life-saving medical equipment, cars, every piece of technology, showed us we’ve got to get back to work making more chips,” Raimondo said.

    Full Disclosure

    Intel’s new foundry strategy will involve breaking out the new unit’s financials to let investors see how that part of the business is operating. “We’re not fixing one company; we’re establishing two vibrant new organizations,” Gelsinger said.

    An Intel factory employee holds a wafer with 3D stacked Foveros technology at an Intel fab in Hillsboro Oregon.

    An Intel factory employee holds a wafer with 3D stacked Foveros technology at an Intel fab in Hillsboro, Oregon.Photograph: Intel Corporation

    Now all Intel needs is more customers willing to trust it with the future of their business. Some chip industry insiders say the company’s revamped foundry plans seem more likely to succeed than previous attempts to revive Intel’s fortunes.

    “Before Pat joined they really didn’t have an understanding of the foundry market,” says Dan Hutcheson, a long-time chip industry analyst with Tech Insights. “This has steadily improved. The messaging is much more focused, and they are picking up customers, which proves they are doing something right.”

    Gelsinger took over as CEO of Intel in 2021 with the company on a downward trajectory following several high-profile missteps. He promised an aggressive comeback plan that would involve developing more competitive chips of its own while also regaining an engineering edge in manufacturing and offering that up to other firms.

    Hutcheson says the company’s biggest edge may be that it can offer advanced packaging of newly carved chips into working components, guaranteed supply lines, and other ancillary chipmaking solutions that customers see as more secure in an uncertain world. “Their biggest point of differentiation seems to be that they are a strategic alternative to TSMC,” he says.

    Intel’s decline has caused concern in the US national security establishment because of the importance of computer chips and the extraordinary potential of AI. China’s technology ambitions and the potentially vulnerable location of most of TSMC’s factories in Taiwan has caused fears that US access to the world’s best chips could be cut off. In 2022, the US government passed the CHIPS Act promising $52 billion to reinvigorate domestic chipmaking and secure silicon supply lines. According to a Bloomberg report, Intel is in line to receive $10 billion of that money.

    Intel apparently believes it could make use of even more government cash. Onstage today Gelsinger asked Secretary Raimondo if the US government might need a second CHIPs act. “I suspect there will have to be—whether you call it CHIPS Two or something else—continued investment if we want to lead the world,” Raimondo said.

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