The Magic Of Planet-Scale Orchestration, The Intel Way

Did you know there’s a whole chain of complex processes beyond wafer production?

Fifty-one years later, it is home to 15,000 employees with over 900,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity in Penang. Its current and upcoming facilities are capable of handling all the stages after receiving a silicon wafer. It is also home to the design and development stages of Intel’s next-generation Meteor Lake processors, including its high-volume manufacturing. This is the very first time that Intel

There are four other vital stages beyond wafer fabrication that help get processors out to consumers and businesses that are not often discussed. Chiefly, they are the advanced packaging stage, die prep and die sorting, die assembly and testing, and finally, board and system-level integration testing. While Intel’s homeland in the US has several wafer fab plants, most of the packaging, assembly and testing phases occur across overseas sites. Of them, Malaysia houses the company’s very first offshore site from way back in 1972. is opening up its Penang factories to the press at such a large scale and with broad access to most of the critical stages that processors undergo to convert them into their final form – be it shipped off to laptop manufacturers, or to be boxed up for retail sales. As such, we truly appreciate the access and logistics they’ve arranged to make the Intel Tech Tour Malaysia such an eye-opener.

In essence, the Intel Penang operations play a vital role in upholding Intel’s IDM 2.0 leadership plan (where IDM stands for Integrated Device Manufacturer) outlined by CEO Pat Gelsinger to uplift the internal factory network and support at-scale manufacturing inhouse. Intel has already invested billions into its Penang factories, but they are stopping anytime soon.