Joining hands with Amazon Web Services, Intel plans to co-invest in custom chip designs, including AI fabric and Xeon 6 chips, to be manufactured at its Ohio facilities in the US.
Last week, Intel announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to co-invest in its internal foundry. As disclosed by the company, the agreement involves Intel producing custom chip designs for AWS, including an AI fabric chip on Intel’s 18A process and a custom Xeon 6 chip on Intel’s 3 processes.
The manufacturing will take place at Intel’s upcoming $28 billion semiconductor facilities in New Albany, Ohio, where AWS also operates.
Intel and AWS first collaborated in 2006, when Amazon introduced its elastic compute cloud service featuring Intel chips. AWS CEO Matt Garman highlighted this long-standing relationship in the announcement.
At the same time, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger noted that combining Intel’s chip design and manufacturing expertise with AWS’s cloud and AI services will foster innovation across their ecosystem and support the growth of a sustainable domestic AI supply chain.
Furthermore, Intel and AWS plan to explore further design collaborations, including additional chips based on the Intel 18A and future nodes such as Intel 18AP and Intel 14A, which will be produced in Ohio.
Ohio has emerged as a critical location for both companies. AWS is set to invest an additional $7.8 billion to expand its data centre operations in central Ohio, building on the $10.3 billion already invested since 2015.
This partnership aligns with Intel’s efforts to strengthen its foundry business, launched in 2021 to compete with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
Moreover, on the same day as the announcement of the partnership, Intel also received $3 billion from the Department of Defence under the CHIPS and Science Act to enhance its foundry capabilities.
This funding is distinct from the $8.5 billion Intel secured in March to bolster semiconductor manufacturing at Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon sites.
