인텔이 수년간 방치됐던 뉴멕시코주 파브(Fab) 시설을 미국 CHIPS법 지원금 등을 바탕으로 재가동하며, 고급 칩 패키징(Advanced chip packaging) 시장에 본격적으로 뛰어들었습니다. 인텔은 칩 제조 공정 경쟁이 치열한 가운데, 구글과 아마존 같은 빅테크 고객사를 맞이해 연간 수십억 달러 규모의 패키징 매출을 기대하며 TSMC와 정면 대결을 준비하고 있습니다. 이는 인텔의 파운드리 사업 부활과 AI 시장 점유율 확대를 위한 핵심 전략으로 평가받습니다.
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뉴멕시코주 리오란초의 앨버커키 북쪽 16마일 지점에는 200에이커가 넘는 부지에 인텔의 칩 공장이 자리 잡고 있습니다. 이 부지는 1980년대에 처음 설립되었으며, 일부는 잔디 농장 위에 건설되었습니다. 2007년 인텔의 사업이 주춤하면서 핵심 파브(Fab) 중 하나인 팹 9(Fab 9)의 가동이 중단되었습니다. 직원들에 따르면 이곳에는 너구리 가족과 오소리가 살기 시작했습니다. 그러다 2024년 1월, 휴면 상태였던 이 파브가 다시 가동되었습니다. 인텔은 미국 CHIPS법으로 지원받은 5억 달러를 포함해 수십억 달러를 이 시설에 쏟아부었습니다. 이제 팹 9과 인접한 팹 11X(Fab 11X)는 인텔이 조용히 빠르게 성장시키고 있는 사업 중 하나인 '고급 칩 패키징(Advanced chip packaging)'을 위한 핵심 인프라가 되었습니다.
패키징은 여러 개의 칩렛(Chiplet, 더 작은 구성 요소)을 하나의 맞춤형 칩으로 결합하는 작업을 말합니다. 지난 6개월 동안 인텔은 회사 내 파운드리(칩 제조) 부문에서 운영하는 고급 패키징 사업이 급성장하고 있다는 신호를 보내왔습니다. 이를 위해 인텔은 규모 면에서 인텔을 훨씬 앞서는 대만반도체제조(TSMC)와 정면으로 경쟁하고 있습니다. 하지만 AI가 모든 종류의 컴퓨팅 파워에 대한 수요를 촉발하고, 거의 모든 주요 기술 기업이 자체 맞춤형 칩 제작을 고려하는 시대에 인텔은 이러한 노력을 통해 더 큰 AI 파이를 차지할 수 있다고 생각합니다.
1월 분기 실적 발표 통화에서 팻 겔싱어 전 인텔 CEO는 인텔의 패키징이 경쟁사와 차별화되는 '매우 큰 경쟁 우위'라고 주장했습니다. 재무 책임자(CFO) 데이브 진스너도 같은 통화에서 회사가 의미 있는 웨이퍼 매출이 발생하기 전에도 패키징 매출이 들어올 것으로 기대한다고 말했습니다. 진스너는 지난 12~18개월 동안 패키징 매출 전망치를 수억 달러에서 '10억 달러를 훌쩍 넘는 수준'으로 상향 조정했다고 밝혔습니다.
진스너는 3월 모건스탠리 기술, 미디어 및 통신 컨퍼런스에서 이에 대해 자세히 설명하며, 인텔의 패키징은 '아이러니하게도 현재 파운드리 비즈니스에서 더 흥미로운 부분'이라고 불렀고, 회사가 '패키징 매출 측면에서 연간 수십억 달러에 달하는 거래를 성사시키기 직전'이라고 덧붙였습니다.
복수의 소식통에 따르면 인텔은 고급 패키징 서비스를 위한 최소 두 개의 대형 고객사와 지속적인 논의를 진행해 왔습니다. 바로 자체 맞춤형 칩을 제조하지만 제조 공정의 일부를 외주하는 구글과 아마존입니다. 이러한 거래는 수년간의 정체와 모바일 칩 시장의 기회 상실 후, 부분적으로 미국 정부의 자금 지원을 받아 재기를 모색하는 고난을 겪는 칩 제조사 인텔에 큰 호재가 될 것입니다.
구글의 리 플레밍 대변인은 구글이 공개적으로 공급업체 관계를 논의하지 않는다며 코멘트를 거부했습니다. 아마존 역시 코멘트를 거부했습니다. 인텔은 특정 고객에 대해서는 코멘트하지 않는다고 밝혔습니다.
인텔의 고급 패키징 사업에 대한 야망은 회사가 이러한 거대 기술 기업과 같은 외부 고객을 확보할 수 있는지에 달려 있습니다. 2024년부터 회사는 사실상 두 부서로 나뉘었습니다. 인텔이 PC 제조업체와 데이터 센터에 비용 효율적인 CPU를 설계하고 판매하는 오랜 '제품' 부서와, 인텔이 첨단 반도체를 제조하는 파운드리 부서입니다.
인텔의 파운드리 계획과 생산할 수 있는 첨단 칩 시스템의 수는 최근 수년 동안 인텔이 CEO를 교체하고 파브 증설을 시작했다가 중단하는 모습을 지켜본 기술 분석가 및 투자자들 사이에서 면밀히 주시되는 지표입니다.
진스너는 모건스탠리 컨퍼런스에서 인텔 파운드리의 패키징 사업이 다른 제품 라인에서 주장하는 것과 동일한 40%의 매출총이익률(Gross Margin)을 달성할 수 있다고 믿는다고 말했습니다. 하지만 이는 여전히 극히 어려운 과제입니다. 오랜 기간 칩 산업 분석가로 활동한 티리아스 리서치(Tirias Research)의 창립자 짐 맥그레거(Jim McGregor)는 '패키징은 매월 10만 장의 웨이퍼를 가동하고 싶다고 말하는 것만큼 쉽지 않다'며...
Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Sixteen miles north of Albuquerque, in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, an Intel chip plant sits on more than 200 acres of land. The site was first established in the 1980’s, part of it built on top of a sod farm. In 2007, as Intel’s business faltered, operations in one of the key fabs, Fab 9, came to a halt. Employees say families of raccoons and a badger took up residence in the space. Then, in January 2024, the dormant fab was booted up again. Intel funneled billions into the facility, including $500 million it was granted from the US CHIPS Act. Now, Fab 9 and its neighbor, Fab 11X, are critical infrastructure for one of Intel’s quietly fast-growing businesses: Advanced chip packaging. Packaging involves combining multiple chiplets, or smaller components, onto a single, custom chip. Over the past six months, Intel has been signaling that its advanced packaging business, which operates within the Foundry chip-making arm of the company, is having a growth spurt. The company’s efforts around this have it going head-to-head with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation , which far surpasses Intel’s production in terms of scale. But in an era where AI is driving demand for all kinds of computing power, and leading nearly every major tech company to consider making its own custom chips, Intel thinks this effort can help it grab a bigger slice of the AI pie. During a quarterly earnings call in January, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan claimed that Intel’s packaging is a “very big differentiator” from competitors. Chief financial officer Dave Zinsner said on the same call that the company expects to see revenue from packaging “come in even before we start to see meaningful wafer revenue.” Zinsner said he had revised his packaging revenue projections over the past 12 to 18 months, from hundreds of millions of dollars to “well north of $1 billion.” Zinsner elaborated on this in March at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom conference, when he called Intel's packaging “ironically, the more interesting part of the Foundry business today,” adding that the company was “close to closing some deals that are in the billions of dollars per year, in terms of revenue on packaging.” Multiple sources say that Intel has been in ongoing talks with at least two large customers for its advanced packaging services: Google and Amazon, which both make their own custom chips but outsource parts of the fabrication process. These deals would be a boon for beleaguered chipmaker Intel, which is attempting a comeback—partially funded by the US government —after years of stagnation and missing out on mobile chips. A spokesperson for Google, Lee Fleming, declined to comment, saying that Google doesn’t publicly discuss its supplier relationships. Amazon also declined to comment. Intel said it does not comment on specific customers. Intel’s ambitions for its advanced packaging business depend largely on whether the company can secure outside customers like these tech giants. Since 2024, the company has effectively been split into two: There’s the longstanding “product” side, where Intel designs and sells cost-efficient CPUs to PC makers and data centers; and the aspirational Foundry side, where Intel makes advanced semiconductors. Intel’s Foundry plans and the number of advanced chip systems it can yield are closely-watched signals amongst tech analysts and investors, who in recent years have seen Intel cycle through CEOs and start and stop fab buildouts. Zinsner, for one, said at the Morgan Stanley conference that he now believes Intel Foundry’s packaging business can achieve the same 40 percent gross margins that it claims on the rest of its products. It’s still an extremely challenging proposition. “Packaging is not as easy as saying, ‘I want to run 100,000 wafers per month,’” says Jim McGregor, a longtime chip industry analyst and the founder of Tirias Research, referring to a continuous flow of chips in various stages of production. “It really comes down to whether Intel’s [packaging] fabs can make deals. If we see them expanding those operations more, that’s an indicator that they have.” Last month, Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, revealed in a post on Facebook that Intel is expanding its Malaysian chip-making facilities, which were first established back in the 1970s. Ibrahim said the head of Intel’s Foundry, Naga Chandrasekaran, had “outlined plans to commence the first phase” of expansion, which would include advanced packaging. “I welcome Intel's decision to begin operations for the complex later this year,” a translated version of Ibrahim’s post read. An Intel spokesperson, John Hipsher, confirmed that it’s building out additional chip assembly and test capacity in Penang, “amid rising global demand for Intel Foundry packaging solutions.” Package Store According to Chandrasekaran, who took over Intel’s Foundry operations in 2025 and spoke exclusively with WIRED during the reporting of this story, the term “advanced packaging” itself didn’t exist a decade ago. Chips have always required some sort of integration of transistors and capacitors, which control and store energy. For a long time the semiconductor industry was focused on miniaturization, or, shrinking the size of components on chips. As the world began demanding more from its computers in the 2010s, chips started to get even more dense with processing units, high-bandwidth memory, and all of the necessary connective parts. Eventually, chipmakers started to take a system-in-packages or package-on-package approach, in which multiple components were stacked on top of one another in order to squeeze more power and memory out of the same surface space. 2D stacking gave way to 3D stacking. TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, began offering packaging technologies like CoWoS (chip on wafer on substrate) and, later, SoIC (system on integrated chip) to customers. Essentially, the pitch was that TSMC would handle not just the front end of chip-making—the wafer part—but also the back end, where all of the chip tech would be packaged together. Intel had ceded its chip manufacturing lead to TSMC at this point, but continued to invest in packaging. In 2017 it introduced a process called EMIB, or embedded multi-die interconnect bridge, which was unique because it shrunk the actual connections, or bridges, between the components in the chip package. In 2019, it introduced Foveros, an advanced die-stacking process. The company’s next packaging advancement was a bigger leap: EMIB-T. Announced last May, EMIB-T promises to improve power efficiency and signal integrity between all the components on the chips. One former Intel employee with direct knowledge of the company’s packaging efforts tells WIRED that Intel’s EMIB and EMIB-T are designed to be a more “surgical” way of packaging chips than TSMC’s approach. Like most chip advancements, this is supposed to be more power efficient, save space, and, ideally, save customers money in the long runThe company says EMIB-T will roll out in fabs this year. Unsurprisingly, AI has been a big catalyst for these changes. “Because of AI, advanced packaging has really come to the forefront,” Chandrasekaran said. “Even more so than the silicon itself, chip packaging is going to transform how this AI revolution comes to fruition over the next decade.” Intel began readying for mass production of EMIB-T in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The Rio Rancho facility houses around 2700 Intel employees, roughly 200 less than it had last year; Tan slashed Intel’s workforce after he took over as CEO. The surrounding land is arid desert. As is the case with a lot of tech infrastructure expansions, local advocacy groups have expressed serious concerns about Intel’s water usage and the fumes the plant is giving off. (Intel claims it recycles water at the Rio Rancho site.) A short tour inside Rio Ran