Intel formally opened a $3 billion expansion of its Oregon research factory Monday, boasting that the cutting-edge factory will enable it to recapture the lead in semiconductor technology. The company also announced it is renaming its Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro for Gordon Moore, the legendary engineer who co-founded Intel.
The 450-acre property, now formally known as “Gordon Moore Park at Ronler Acres,” is Intel’s main Oregon site, and it’s where the company crafts each new generation of microprocessor.
Intel said it has essentially finished three years of work on the main Hillsboro factory, an addition known as Mod3. CEO Pat Gelsinger attended Monday morning’s commemoration, despite the unseasonable April snow, joined by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, and U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici.
Mod3 will add 270,000 square feet of cleanroom space to the research factory Intel calls D1X, an expansion roughly equivalent to two full-size Costco stores. Intel said this third phase of construction increases the whole site’s cleanroom capacity by 20%.
Intel’s research chiefs say the upgrade will enable the company to use huge new manufacturing tools to produce several advances in chip technology, which it later will replicate at factories around the world.
Intel’s headquarters are in Silicon Valley, but since the 1990s its most advanced research has been in Oregon. Intel is the state’s largest corporate employer, with 22,000 workers assigned to its campuses in Washington County. The company said it hired about 2,000 factory technicians in the past year to support the latest expansion.
“Oregon will always be the leading edge, the site where we do the development of the next (technology) node,” Sanjay Natarajan, an Intel vice president, told a roundtable of journalists from around the world last week to preview the Oregon expansion. “We’ll ramp it in place here and then we’ll transfer it to all sites.”
Intel’s researchers have struggled in recent years to maintain the pace of invention, suffering major delays to three successive technology nodes. Those setbacks enabled rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to take the lead in chip technology and threw Intel into crisis.
The company responded last year by hiring Gelsinger, who had been Intel’s chief technology officer before leaving in 2009 and eventually becoming CEO of software maker VMware. Since returning 14 months ago, Gelsinger has committed to spend $80 billion to build new factories in Arizona, Ohio and Germany – and billions more on chip research.
Intel says the fruits of that investment are beginning to pay off. After years of delays in new manufacturing technology, Natarajan said Intel is running ahead of schedule on its 18A microprocessor, formerly due in 2025. He said Intel now expects to have that new chip available in the second half of 2024, based on early production benchmarks.
“Enough of those indictors were looking positive, better than we expected, that we felt confident” moving up the timetable, Natarajan said. He reiterated that Intel expects to retake the lead in semiconductor performance by 2025.
If Intel’s spending spree has reinvigorated the company’s technologists, it has appalled investors and depressed the company’s stock. The chipmaker has warned profit margins will be constrained for years while the company plays catch-up.
Intel hopes to offset some of its spending with a share of billions of dollars in pending subsidies from governments in the U.S. and the European Union. The $52 billion CHIPS Act has received full-throated support from President Joe Biden and congressional leaders, who hope the money would make U.S. manufacturing competitive with Asia.
But the legislation, contained in a broader spending bill, has been stalled for months in Congress amid partisan disputes about provisions in the House version of the bill that would expand its spending and scope. Last week, Democratic leaders named Wyden and Bonamici to a conference committee that seeks to resolve differences and clear the way for final passage.
On Monday, Gelsinger said he hopes Congress will pass the bill by Memorial Day.
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Speaking after Monday’s event, Wyden said he’s committed to securing the federal money but would not commit to a target date for passing the legislation.
“We’re going to push as hard as we can to move as fast as we can,” the senator said. Wyden said that competition with China is serving as a motivational factor in Congress, which may help ease some of the delays that usually characterize Senate business.
“I think that strengthens our hand in terms of getting this done quickly,” Wyden said.
Intel enjoys enormous tax breaks in Oregon, saving $760 million in property tax breaks over the past five years – $193 million last year alone. Ohio will pay far more, promising $2 billion in incentives for new factories near Columbus, including $600 million in direct subsidies.
All the world’s major semiconductor manufacturers are building large new factories in the U.S. Even though the cluster of chipmakers in the Portland area is among the densest anywhere, all the manufacturers passed over Oregon when choosing their new sites.
That’s in large part because the region lacks large, 1,000-acre parcels of industrial land that chipmakers want for the new generation of “megafabs.” Brown, Wyden, Bonamici and a collection of other government and business leaders have formed a task force that aims to address that issue and others to clear the way for fresh chip investment.
“Computer chips are the beating heart of Oregon’s 21st Century economy,” Wyden said at Monday’s event. “It has become clear that we’re all going to work together to update our playbook to build on our state’s strengths to keep Oregon growing (and keep) this crucial industry right here in Oregon.”
Intel’s Oregon campuses are nearly fully built out, but Gelsinger told The Oregonian/OregonLive last year that there’s still room for one more factory expansion.
“In another three or four years, I anticipate we’ll have another expansion here that we’ll then replicate across the manufacturing network,” he said then.
The newly named Moore Center, the main office building at Intel’s Hillsboro manufacturing campus, which will now be called the Gordon Moore Park at Ronler Acres.Tim Herman, Intel
Intel’s Ronler Acres campus hosts 14,000 employees and is roughly the size of downtown Portland. It was a failed housing development, created by Washington County in 1959. By the late 1980s it had just one house and duplex and no water or sewer service. Nearby residents were using the property as an informal trash dump.
Intel acquired the property in 1994 and built a succession of massive factories, eventually making Ronler Acres the heart of its manufacturing research.
The property will now be named for Moore, who helped found Intel in 1968 and later served as its CEO. The main office building on the site, previously called RA4, will be the Moore Center.
Moore is famous for coining Moore’s Law, the maxim that predicted the number of transistors in computer chips would double at regular intervals — every year, or, in a later iteration, every two. Moore, now 93 and living in Hawaii, correctly anticipated that would produce exponential growth in computing power even as costs declined.
As recently as last fall Moore participated in an Intel technical presentation through a prerecorded video segment.
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore with Pat Gelsinger, then the company’s chief technology officer, in 2007.Intel photo
While Moore never lived in Oregon, he’s been credited with playing an essential role in Intel’s decision to expand here. Former Intel Vice President Keith Thompson, the company’s first Oregon site manager, said a member of the Tektronix board called Moore in the early 1970s and suggested Intel consider Oregon for its first factory outside California. Tektronix, which makes engineering tools, is based near Beaverton.
So Moore sent Thompson to Oregon, and Thompson chose a site in Aloha. Moore signed off in 1974, even though Thompson said Intel hadn’t previously considered expanding into Oregon.
“We probably didn’t even know Portland existed,” Thompson told The Oregonian in 2007.
— Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | Twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699