A look at Intel's chip-making process at its Hillsboro, Oregon and Chandler, Arizona campuses and the infrastructure behind its two planned $10B Arizona fabs
more than in constructing the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ ... https://twitter.com/... Daniel Munro / @dk_munro : How semiconductors are made. (The section on what it takes to build a fab is especially fascinating). https://www.nytimes.com/... Subrahmanyam Kvj / @sub8u : Fab photo feature on semiconductor fabs. Highlighting why it is so complex, and expensive, to quickly fix the global chip shortage. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Dylan Patel / @dylan522p : Intel Ireland now has their first EUV tool What's odd is that it's not from the Netherlands, but instead it was shipped from Oregon to Netherlands to Ireland. Why not straight from Netherlands? Did they transfer an earlier tool to get a massive upgrade? https://www.youtube.com/... Carl Malamud / @carlmalamud : Fascinating article on the new semiconductor fabs being built by Intel. https://www.nytimes.com/... James Pethokoukis / @jimpethokoukis : Don't take our modern world for granted. A microchip is a marvel. Great piece here. https://www.nytimes.com/... Pui-Wing Tam / @puiwingtam : An up-close look at why the world can't suddenly recover from a shortage of microchips. Stunning video, photo and text from @alanacelii @donal888 @philip_cheung https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This photo feature extends a run of fab-tour journalism: Protocol went inside Intel's Ronler complex in Hillsboro last December, and the Washington Post walked through GlobalFoundries' upstate New York plant with its three-month, 700-step manufacturing process. What the Times adds is the infrastructure view — the sheer physical build-out behind Intel's two planned $10B fabs in Chandler, Arizona.
The piece matters because it documents capacity being committed at the peak of the shortage, with Intel also routing its first EUV tool from Oregon through the Netherlands to Ireland. The later record shows how these bets resolve: the market tipped into an inventory correction months afterward, while Intel's Arizona footprint ultimately scaled far past the plan described here.
First-order effects
- Intel's two $10B Chandler fabs put billions into Arizona construction, tooling, and site infrastructure now, expanding capacity at the company's most advanced US campus alongside Hillsboro research operations.
- Shipping an EUV tool from Oregon to Ireland makes Intel Ireland a node for leading-edge production, extending the same process technology across Intel's global sites rather than concentrating it in the US.
Second-order effects
- Rivals like GlobalFoundries, whose own plant tour exposed comparable $10B-scale equipment bills, are pushed to justify their capacity roadmaps against Intel's visible build-out when customers weigh supply commitments.
- Fab-scale spending of this size pulls suppliers of cleanroom infrastructure and lithography tools into multi-year backlogs, so each announced fab raises the queue time and cost of the next one.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across this coverage — fabs planned at $10B that later appear as a $32B Fab 52 — points to structural cost escalation in leading-edge chipmaking, narrowing the field to players who can finance decade-long bets through downcycles like the one that followed this build-out.
- Efforts to replicate full chipmaking within single countries keep exposing bottlenecks, suggesting national resilience programs will keep funding redundant capacity even when demand softens.
The trend: Leading-edge chipmaking is consolidating around ever-larger, ever-costlier fab campuses whose multi-year build lags turn today's shortage-driven commitments into tomorrow's overcapacity risk.