News

[Core Vision] System level OEM: Intel’s turning chips

The OEM market, which is still in deep water, has been particularly troubled recently. After Samsung said that it would mass produce 1.4nm in 2027 and TSMC might return to the semiconductor throne, Intel also launched a “system level OEM” to strongly assist IDM2.0.

 

At the Intel On Technology Innovation Summit held recently, CEO Pat Kissinger announced that Intel OEM Service (IFS) will usher in the era of “system level OEM”. Unlike the traditional OEM mode that only provides customers with wafer manufacturing capabilities, Intel will provide a comprehensive solution covering wafers, packages, software and chips. Kissinger emphasized that “this marks the paradigm shift from system on a-chip to system in a package.”

 

After Intel accelerated its march towards IDM2.0, it has made constant actions recently: whether it is opening x86, joining RISC-V camp, acquiring tower, expanding UCIe alliance, announcing tens of billions of dollars of OEM production line expansion plan, etc., which shows that it will have a wild prospect in the OEM market.

 

Now, will Intel, which has offered a “big move” for system level contract manufacturing, add more chips in the battle of the “Three Emperors”?

 

99c8-2c00beba29011a11bc39c895872ff9b6

The “coming out” of the system level OEM concept has already been traced.

 

After the slowdown of Moore’s Law, achieving the balance between transistor density, power consumption and size is facing more challenges. However, emerging applications are increasingly demanding high-performance, powerful computing power and heterogeneous integrated chips, driving the industry to explore new solutions.

 

With the help of design, manufacturing, advanced packaging and the recent rise of Chiplet, it seems to have become a consensus to realize the “survival” of Moore’s Law and the continuous transition of chip performance. Especially in the case of limited process minification in the future, the combination of chiplet and advanced packaging will be a solution that breaks through Moore’s Law.

 

The substitute factory, which is the “main force” of connection design, manufacturing and advanced packaging, obviously has inherent advantages and resources that can be revitalized. Aware of this trend, top players, such as TSMC, Samsung and Intel, are focusing on layout.

 

In the opinion of a senior person in the semiconductor OEM industry, system level OEM is an inevitable trend in the future, which is equivalent to the expansion of pan IDM mode, similar to CIDM, but the difference is that CIDM is a common task for different companies to connect, while pan IDM is to integrate different tasks to provide customers with a TurnkeySolution.

 

In an interview with Micronet, Intel said that from the four support systems of system level OEM, Intel has the accumulation of advantageous technologies.

 

At the wafer manufacturing level, Intel has developed innovative technologies such as RibbonFET transistor architecture and PowerVia power supply, and is steadily implementing the plan to promote five process nodes within four years. Intel can also provide advanced packaging technologies such as EMIB and Foveros to help chip design enterprises integrate different computing engines and process technologies. The core modular components provide greater flexibility for design and drive the entire industry to innovate in price, performance and power consumption. Intel is committed to building a UCIe alliance to help cores from different suppliers or different processes work together better. In terms of software, Intel’s open-source software tools OpenVINO and oneAPI can accelerate product delivery and enable customers to test solutions before production.

 
With the four “protectors” of system level OEM, Intel expects that the transistors integrated on a single chip will expand significantly from the current 100 billion to the trillion level, which is basically a foregone conclusion.

 

“It can be seen that Intel’s system level OEM goal conforms to the strategy of IDM2.0, and has considerable potential, which will lay a foundation for Intel’s future development.” The above people further expressed their optimism for Intel.

 

Lenovo, which is famous for its “one-stop chip solution”, and today’s “one-stop manufacturing” system level OEM new paradigm, may usher in new changes in the OEM market.

 

Winning chips

 

In fact, Intel has made many preparations for the system level OEM. In addition to the various innovation bonuses mentioned above, we should also see the efforts and integration efforts made for the new paradigm of system level encapsulation.

 

Chen Qi, a person in the semiconductor industry, analyzed that from the existing resource reserve, Intel has a complete x86 architecture IP, which is its essence. At the same time, Intel has high-speed SerDes class interface IP such as PCIe and UCle, which can be used to better combine and directly connect chiplets with Intel core CPUs. In addition, Intel controls the formulation of the standards of the PCIe Technology Alliance, and the CXL Alliance and UCle standards developed on the basis of PCIe are also led by Intel, which is equivalent to Intel mastering both the core IP and the very key high-speed SerDes technology and standards.

 

“Intel’s hybrid packaging technology and advanced process capability are not weak. If it can be combined with its x86IP core and UCIe, it will indeed have more resources and voice in the system level OEM era, and create a new Intel, which will remain strong.” Chen Qi told Jiwei.com.

 

You should know that these are all the skills of Intel, which will not be shown easily before.

 

“Due to its strong position in the CPU field in the past, Intel firmly controlled the key resource in the system – memory resources. If other chips in the system want to use memory resources, they must obtain them through the CPU. Therefore, Intel can restrict other companies’ chips through this move. In the past, the industry complained about this’ indirect ‘monopoly.” Chen Qi explained, “But with the development of the times, Intel felt the pressure of competition from all sides, so it took the initiative to change, open up PCIe technology, and established CXL Alliance and UCle Alliance successively, which is equivalent to actively putting the cake on the table.”

 

From the perspective of the industry, Intel’s technology and layout in IC design and advanced packaging are still very solid. Isaiah Research believes that Intel’s move towards the system level OEM mode is to integrate the advantages and resources of these two aspects and differentiate other wafer foundries through the concept of a one-stop process from design to packaging, so as to obtain more orders in the future OEM market.

 

“In this way, Turnkey solution is very attractive for small companies with primary development and insufficient R&D resources.” Isaiah Research is also optimistic about the attraction of Intel’s move to small and medium-sized customers.

 

For large customers, some industry experts said frankly that the most realistic advantage of Intel system level OEM is that it can expand win-win cooperation with some data center customers, such as Google, Amazon, etc.

 

“First, Intel can authorize them to use the CPU IP of Intel X86 architecture in their own HPC chips, which is conducive to maintaining Intel’s market share in the CPU field. Second, Intel can provide high-speed interface protocol IP such as UCle, which is more convenient for customers to integrate other functional IP. Third, Intel provides a complete platform to solve the problems of streaming and packaging, forming the Amazon version of the chiplet solution chip that Intel will ultimately participate in It should be a more perfect business plan. ” The above experts further supplemented.

 

Still need to make up lessons

 

However, OEM needs to provide a package of platform development tools and establish the service concept of “customer first”. From the past history of Intel, it has also tried OEM, but the results are not satisfactory. Although the system level OEM can help them realize the aspirations of IDM2.0, the hidden challenges still need to be overcome.

 

“Just as Rome was not built in a day, OEM and packaging do not mean that everything is OK if the technology is strong. For Intel, the biggest challenge is still the OEM culture.” Chen Qi told Jiwei.com.

 

Chen Qijin further pointed out that if the ecological Intel, such as manufacturing and software, can also be solved by spending money, technology transfer or open platform mode, Intel’s biggest challenge is to build a OEM culture from the system, learn to communicate with customers, provide customers with the services they need, and meet their differentiated OEM needs.

 

According to Isaiah’s research, the only thing Intel needs to supplement is the ability of wafer foundry. Compared with TSMC, which has continuous and stable major customers and products to help improve the yield of each process, Intel mostly produces its own products. In the case of limited product categories and capacity, Intel’s optimization ability for chip manufacturing is limited. Through the system level OEM mode, Intel has the opportunity to attract some customers through design, advanced packaging, core grain and other technologies, and improve the wafer manufacturing capability step by step from a small number of diversified products.

 
In addition, as the “traffic password” of system level OEM, Advanced Packaging and Chiplet also face their own difficulties.

 

Taking system level packaging as an example, from its meaning, it is equivalent to the integration of different Dies after wafer production, but it is not easy. Taking TSMC as an example, from the earliest solution for Apple to the later OEM for AMD, TSMC has spent many years on advanced packaging technology and launched several platforms, such as CoWoS, SoIC, etc., but in the end, most of them still provide a certain pair of institutionalized packaging services, which is not the efficient packaging solution that is rumored to provide customers with “chips like building blocks”.

 

Finally, TSMC launched a 3D Fabric OEM platform after integrating various packaging technologies. At the same time, TSMC seized the opportunity to participate in the formation of UCle Alliance, and tried to connect its own standards with UCIe standards, which is expected to promote the “building blocks” in the future.

 

The key of core particle combination is to unify the “language”, that is, to standardize the chiplet interface. For this reason, Intel has once again wielded the banner of influence to establish the UCIE standard for chip to chip interconnection based on the PCIe standard.

b59d-5d0ed0c949c83fbf522b45c370b23005
Obviously, it still needs time for the standard “customs clearance”. Linley Gwennap, president and chief analyst of The Linley Group, put forward in an interview with Micronet that what the industry really needs is a standard way to connect the cores together, but companies need time to design new cores to meet emerging standards. Although some progress has been made, it still takes 2-3 years.

7358-e396d753266b8da1786fead76a333339

A senior semiconductor personage expressed doubts from a multi-dimensional perspective. It will take time to observe whether Intel will be accepted by the market again after its withdrawal from OEM service in 2019 and its return in less than three years. In terms of technology, the next generation CPU expected to be launched by Intel in 2023 is still difficult to show advantages in terms of process, storage capacity, I/O functions, etc. In addition, Intel’s process blueprint has been delayed several times in the past, but now it has to carry out organizational restructuring, technology improvement, market competition, factory building and other difficult tasks at the same time, which seems to add more unknown risks than the past technical challenges. In particular, whether Intel can establish a new system level OEM supply chain in the short term is also a big test.


Post time: Oct-25-2022


Leave Your Message