Intel on April 12th celebrated the grand opening of the latest expansion of D1X, its leading-edge factory in Hillsboro, Oregon. In a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by senior government officials and community leaders, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger highlighted the company’s positive impact in Oregon and reiterated its commitment to U.S. leadership in semiconductor research and development (R&D). In honor of the site’s heritage of innovation, Intel also announced a new name for the nearly 500-acre campus: Gordon Moore Park at Ronler Acres. The new name recognizes the site’s unique contributions to driving Moore’s Law, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore’s 1965 prediction that has guided innovation in the semiconductor industry for more than 50 years.
“Since its founding, Intel has been devoted to relentlessly advancing Moore’s Law. This new factory space will bolster our ability to deliver the accelerated process roadmap required to support our bold IDM 2.0 strategy. Oregon is the longtime heart of our global semiconductor R&D, and I can think of no better way to honor Gordon Moore’s legacy than by bestowing his name on this campus, which, like him, has had such a tremendous role in advancing our industry,” said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO.
Gordon Moore Park is the headquarters of Intel’s global Technology Development organization, which is responsible for advancing Moore’s Law by creating new transistor architectures, wafer processes and packaging technologies that underpin the company’s product roadmap and provide the foundation for applications ranging from personal computers to cloud infrastructure to 5G networks. The team of approximately 10,000 employees, primarily based in Hillsboro, is widely recognized as one of the world’s preeminent silicon process engineering organizations.
During the campus’s 25-year history, engineers and scientists there have continually faced – then overcome – the challenges posed by physics when the features on a chip shrink to the size of atoms. With inventions like high-k metal gate technology, tri-gate 3D transistors and strained silicon, Intel has consistently delivered foundational process innovations to maintain pace with Moore’s Law.
“These groundbreaking process innovations all originated right here in Oregon. With the new expansion of our D1X factory, Oregon is well-positioned to deliver the next generation of leading-edge technologies,” said Ann Kelleher, executive vice president and general manager of Technology Development. “Semiconductors are fundamental to U.S. technology leadership, our economy, and supply chain resilience. Intel is the only company in the world with the majority of its process and packaging R&D and high-volume leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.”
Last year, Intel unveiled one of the most detailed process technology roadmaps in its history. The company has moved to an accelerated pace of innovation to enable an annual cadence of improvements, leveraging breakthrough technologies that will power new products through 2025 and beyond, including:
- RibbonFET, the first new transistor architecture in more than a decade.
- PowerVia, an industry-first new backside power delivery method.
- The industry’s first use of High NA EUV next generation lithography.
With “Mod3” – a more than $3 billion investment to expand D1X – Intel engineers now have an additional 270,000 square feet of clean room space to develop next-generation silicon process technologies. At any given time, multiple logic process technologies are in various stages of the development cycle in the D1X factory. The Technology Development team creates the baseline manufacturing technology required to bring innovations into the physical world. New process technologies are then transferred identically from this central development factory in Oregon to Intel’s global network of high-volume manufacturing sites. After transfer, the network of factories and the development factory collaborate to continue driving operational improvements. This enables fast ramp of the operation, fast learning and better quality control.
