Intel raises $1 billion fund to build casting innovation ecosystem. This new funding will strengthen Intel’s foundry business and drive the adoption of disruptive technologies.
What’s New: Intel today announced a new $1 billion fund aimed at supporting startups and established companies developing disruptive technologies for the casting ecosystem. The fund, the product of a collaboration between Intel Capital and Intel Foundry Services (IFS), will prioritize investments in capabilities that accelerate the time-to-market for foundry customers—intellectual property (IP), software tools, innovative chip architectures, and advanced packaging technologies. Intel also announced partnerships with eligible companies for this funding and its focus on key industry directions: enabling modular products with an open chiplet platform and supporting design approaches that leverage multiple instruction set architectures (ISAs) including x86, Arm, and RISC-V.
“Casting customers are rapidly adopting a modular design approach to differentiate their products and shorten time-to-market. Intel Foundry Services is in a position to lead this important development in the industry. Thanks to our new investment fund and open chiplet platform, the ecosystem’s entire We can help him develop disruptive technologies across the spectrum of chip architectures.”
– Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger
How It Works: Intel has recently introduced IFS as part of its IDM 2.0 strategy to help meet growing global demand for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. had established. IFS is positioned to offer the largest portfolio of different IPs in the US and Europe that includes all the leading ISAs in the foundry industry, in addition to providing leading packaging and process technology and committed capacity.
A robust ecosystem is paramount in helping casting clients bring their designs to life using IFS technologies. The new innovation fund was created to strengthen the ecosystem in three ways:
Equity investments in disruptive start-ups Strategic investments to accelerate partner scale-ups Ecosystem investments to develop disruptive capabilities that support IFS clients.
“Intel is a powerhouse of innovation, but we know that not all good ideas come from within our four walls,” said Randhir Thakur, President of Foundry Services, Intel. “Innovation thrives in open and collaborative environments. This $1 billion fund, created in partnership with Intel Capital, a recognized leader in venture capital investment, will pool all of Intel’s resources to drive innovation in the foundry ecosystem.”
Dan Key, Intel Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, said, “Intel Capital’s history and expertise is rooted in chips. Over the past 30 years, we’ve expanded the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem from underground materials to software tools used to implement a design. “We’ve invested more than $5 billion in 120 companies that support them. From leading initiatives to startups and deep strategic and collaborative investments, our investments drive innovation in architecture, IP, materials, equipment, and design.”
About the Open RISC-V Ecosystem: Delivering a broad spectrum of leadership optimized for Intel processing technologies is a key part of the IFS strategy. IFS is the only foundry to offer IP optimized for all three industry-leading ISAs: x86, Arm and RISC-V.
As the leading open source ISA, RISC-V offers an unprecedented level of scalability and customization in the industry. There is strong demand from casting customers to support more RISC-V IP offerings. As part of its new innovation fund, Intel is also planning investments and offerings that will strengthen the ecosystem and help further adoption of RISC-V. The fund will help disruptive RISC-V companies innovate faster through IFS by collaborating to co-optimize technology, prioritize wafers, support customer designs, build development boards and software infrastructures.
Intel; Andes Technology is joining forces with leading partners in the RISC-V ecosystem such as Esperanto Technologies, SiFive and Ventana Micro Systems. IFS plans to offer a range of validated RISC-V IP cores whose performance is optimized for different market segments. By partnering with leading vendors, IFS will optimize IP so that Intel processing technologies enable RISC-V to work best on any core, from embedded to high-performance. Three types of RISC-V offerings will be offered:
co-products manufactured with IFS technologies, RISC-V cores licensed as Differentiated IP, RISC-V-based chiplet building blocks that take advantage of advanced packaging and high-speed chip-to-chip interfaces.
For detailed information on how IFS catalyzes the RISC-V ecosystem with leading partners, refer to the “Fact Sheet: Catalyzing the RISC-V Ecosystem” document.
In addition to hardware and IP, a rich open source software ecosystem is critical to accelerating the development and adoption of the RISC-V processor and enabling chip designers to create value. IFS will fund an open source software development platform that allows for greater freedom in experimentation, including partners in the ecosystem, universities and consortia. The company announced today that it has joined RISC-V International, a global nonprofit organization that supports the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture and extensions, to advance this program.
University of California, Berkeley Professor Emeritus, distinguished engineer at Google and vice president of RISC-V International, David Patterson said, “Intel, the company that pioneered microprocessors 50 years ago, is now a member of RISC-V International. It makes me very happy,” he said.
About Open Chiplet Platform: With the advent of advanced 3D packaging technologies, chip architects are increasingly adopting a modular approach to design, moving from system-on-chip to system-in-a-pack architectures. This provides a way to break up complex semiconductors into modular blocks called “chiplets”. Each block is customized for a specific function, giving designers incredible flexibility in mixing and matching the best IP and process technologies for the product application. The reuse of IP shortens development cycles and reduces product time to market and cost.
While opportunities exist in many segments, the data center market is one of the first to adopt modular architectures. Many cloud service providers (CSPs) are looking for ways to build customized computing machines with accelerators to improve data center performance for workloads such as artificial intelligence. Closely integrating accelerator chipsets in the same package as the data center CPU provides significantly higher performance and lower power consumption compared to placing accelerator cards close to the CPU cards.
Because this approach combines design IP and process technologies from different vendors, an open ecosystem is required to take full advantage of the power of modular architectures. IFS is enabling this ecosystem with its open chiplet platform, co-developed with CSPs, to accelerate platform and packet integration of customers’ accelerator IP. The platform will leverage Intel’s leading packaging capabilities with IP optimized for IFS’ advanced processing technologies, along with integration and validation services to shorten customer time to market.
Intel is also committed to partnering with other industry leaders to develop an open standard for die-to-die interconnection that enables chipsets to communicate with each other at high speeds. Leveraging a strong track record of widely used standards such as USB, PCI Express, and CXL, the industry can drive a new, open ecosystem that will enable interoperable chipsets from different foundries and transaction nodes to be packaged using a wide variety of technologies.
The new open chiplet platform is gaining strong momentum with customers who value being able to quickly integrate accelerators optimized for new and evolving data center workloads.
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