It has more than 27 miles of multilevel thoroughfares on which 1,700 autonomous vehicles shuttle Intel’s most precious cargo. It’s the automated material-handling system – or AMHS – at Intel’s D1 factory in Hillsboro, Oregon. Intel runs overhead transport systems like this in every one of its six chip fabs worldwide. The boxes scooting along on the overhead tracks are front-opening unified pods – or FOUPs – that carry as many as 25 wafers, each containing hundreds of Intel® chips, on their weekslong fabrication journey starting as blank silicon discs.
Oregon’s wafer superhighway connects nine buildings, including the D1X and D1D factories. The two factories together are a little larger than 12 U.S. football fields. Take a quick 2-minute tour around Oregon’s D1 factory — captured before pandemic recommendations for social distancing took effect — to learn more about what AMHS leader Mutaz Haddadin calls the “heartbeat and blood flow of the fab.”
Intel’s Fab 42 in Arizona
Intel’s Fab 42: A Peek Inside One of the World’s Most Advanced Factories
One of the largest construction projects in the U.S. with almost 6,000 workers is underway on Intel’s Ocotillo campus in Arizona. Intel is outfitting Fab 42 with 1,300 tools (many of them requiring multiple trucks to move), a super overhead highway that zips silicon wafers around all four of the company’s Arizona factories, and a 12-acre water plant that will treat 9.1 million gallons of wastewater a day.
Intel CEO Bob Swan (left) visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan (right) visits Intel’s new 12-acre water recycling facility in Ocotillo, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility has the capacity to treat more than 9 million gallons of water each day. Over the past four decades, Intel has made substantial sustainability investments to support the company’s operations. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan (center) dresses in a bunny suit before he tours Fab 42, the company’s latest factory in Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The factory in Ocotillo is a $7 billion investment that is manufacturing products based on Intel’s 10 nm process. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan (left) tours Fab 42, the company’s latest factory in Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The factory in Ocotillo is a $7 billion investment that is manufacturing products based on Intel’s 10 nm process. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan tours Fab 42, the company’s latest factory in Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The factory in Ocotillo is a $7 billion investment that is manufacturing products based on Intel’s 10 nm process. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel’s automated superhighway, pictured here with Intel CEO Bob Swan (left) during a visit on Oct. 2, 2020, transports thousands of wafers inside Intel’s newest factory, Fab 42 in Ocotillo, Arizona. Intel has manufactured in Arizona for 40 years. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel’s automated superhighway, pictured here with Intel CEO Bob Swan (left) during a visit on Oct. 2, 2020, transports thousands of wafers inside Intel’s newest factory, Fab 42 in Ocotillo, Arizona. Intel has manufactured in Arizona for 40 years. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel CEO Bob Swan tours Fab 42, the company’s latest factory in Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The factory in Ocotillo is a $7 billion investment that is manufacturing products based on Intel’s 10 nm process. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
In celebration of Intel’s 40th anniversary in Arizona, Intel CEO Bob Swan (right) tours Fab 42, the company’s newest Arizona factory in Ocotillo, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility created 3,000 new Intel jobs and supports an additional 7,000 jobs in the community. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel’s automated superhighway, pictured here with Intel CEO Bob Swan and other Intel employees during a visit on Oct. 2, 2020, transports thousands of wafers inside Intel’s newest factory, Fab 42 in Ocotillo, Arizona. Intel has manufactured in Arizona for 40 years. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
In celebration of Intel’s 40th anniversary in Arizona, Intel CEO Bob Swan (right) tours Fab 42, the company’s newest Arizona factory in Ocotillo, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility created 3,000 new Intel jobs and supports an additional 7,000 jobs in the community. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
In celebration of Intel’s 40th anniversary in Arizona, Intel CEO Bob Swan toured Fab 42, the company’s newest Arizona factory in Ocotillo, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. The facility created 3,000 new Intel jobs and supports an additional 7,000 jobs in the community. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel’s newest, leading-edge manufacturing facility is Fab 42 in Ocotillo, Arizona. Fab 42 connects to three other Intel fabrication plants, making the site Intel’s first mega-factory network. It manufactures our newest generation of leadership products that will power hundreds of millions of computing devices worldwide. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel’s newest, leading-edge manufacturing facility is Fab 42 in Ocotillo, Arizona. Fab 42 connects to three other Intel fabrication plants, making the site Intel’s first mega-factory network. It manufactures our newest generation of leadership products that will power hundreds of millions of computing devices worldwide. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel Mask Operation: An Inside Look at a Critical Manufacturing Step
Around the corner from Intel’s Santa Clara, California, headquarters is an unassuming building that houses a critically important step in the process of manufacturing chips: the Intel Mask Operation.
What’s a mask? It’s a six-by-six-inch piece of quartz, a quarter-inch thick, that is used as the template to print circuitry onto a silicon wafer. To create a mask, engineers use computerized drawings from chip designers that are the blueprints for Intel processors and their billions of transistors.
Without the Intel Mask Operation, the company’s factories in Oregon, Arizona, Ireland and Israel would be unable to create a single processor. It takes 70 flawless masks to print the many layers of a single Intel 14nm die.
The Intel Mask Operation in Santa Clara, California, builds the masks used as the templates to print circuitry onto a silicon wafer. To create a mask, engineers use computerized drawings that are the blueprints for Intel processors and their billions of transistors. (Credit: Tim Herman/Intel Corporation)
An Intel engineer inspects a mask as part of the Intel Mask Operation in Santa Clara, California. The mask operation team builds the masks used as the templates to print circuitry onto a silicon wafer. To create a mask, engineers use computerized drawings that are the blueprints for Intel processors and their billions of transistors. (Credit: Tim Herman/Intel Corporation)
