To support early-stage startups and established companies building disruptive technologies for the foundry ecosystem, Intel launches $1 billion fund. The fund is a collaboration of Intel Capital and Intel Foundry Services and will be used in accelerating foundry customers’ time to market – spanning intellectual property (IP), software tools, innovative chip architecture, and advanced packaging technologies.
Along with the launch of the fund, Intel also announced its partnerships with several other companies who are aligned with the fund and focused on strategic industry inflections: enabling modular products with an open chiplet platform and supporting design approaches that leverage multiple instruction set architectures (ISAs), spanning x86, Arm and RISC-V.
“Foundry customers are rapidly embracing a modular design approach to differentiate their products and accelerate time to market. Intel Foundry Services is well-positioned to lead this major industry inflection. With our new investment fund and open chiplet platform, we can help drive the ecosystem to develop disruptive technologies across the full spectrum of chip architectures” said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO.
To meet the growing demand for advanced semiconductor manufacturing, Intel has recently established IFS as a part of the IDM 2.0 strategy. It will not only provide leading-edge packaging and process technology and committed capacity in the U.S. and Europe but also will offer the foundry industry’s broadest portfolio of differentiated IP, including all of the leading ISAs.
Using IFS technologies, foundry customers will bring their designs to life. The fund created will strengthen the ecosystem by equity investments in disruptive startups, strategic investments to accelerate partner scale-up, and ecosystem investments to develop disruptive capabilities supporting IFS customers.
“Intel is an innovation powerhouse, but we know that not all good ideas originate from within our four walls,” said Randhir Thakur, president of Intel Foundry Services. “Innovation thrives in open and collaborative environments. This $1 billion fund in partnership with Intel Capital – a recognized leader in venture capital investing – will marshal the full resources of Intel to drive innovation in the foundry ecosystem.”
Saf Yeboah, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Intel, said: “Intel Capital’s history and expertise are rooted in chips. Over the last 30 years, we have invested over $5 billion into 120 companies supporting the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, from the materials coming out of the ground to the software tools used to implement a design. Our investments, which range from pathfinding bets into early-stage companies to deeply strategic and collaborative investments, drive innovation across architecture, IP, materials, equipment, and design.”
IFS offers a broad range of IP optimized for Intel process technologies. It is the only foundry to offer IP optimized for all three of the industry’s leading ISAs: x86, Arm, and RISC-V. IFS now plans to offer a range of validated RISC-V IP cores including partner products manufactured on IFS technologies, RISC-V cores licensed as differentiated IP and chiplet building blocks based on RISC-V
Looking at the strong demand for foundry customers to support more RISC-VIP offerings, Intel plans investments and offerings that will strengthen the ecosystem and help drive further adoption of RISC-V as part of the new fund. The fund will help disruptive RISC-V companies innovate faster through IFS by collaborating on technology co-optimization, prioritizing wafer shuttles, supporting customer designs, building development boards and software infrastructure, and more.
The company has joined RISC-V International and partnering with major RISC-V companies, including Andes Technology, Esperanto Technologies, SiFive, and Ventana Micro System.
“I’m delighted that Intel, the company that pioneered the microprocessor 50 years ago, is now a member of RISC-V International,” said David Patterson, emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, distinguished engineer at Google and vice-chair of the board for RISC-V International.
