Today’s Newsletter:

• COOLING, TECH, AND POWER: Intel assembles its new foundry tech, Nvidia and AMD have new chips out, and new DAC methods abound

• CHECK THIS OUT: Rich Miller and Last Energy at DCW 

• BIG DEALS: Leaked Docs: Microsoft doubles its data center footprint, IL solar farm to power three data centers, plus Rivos raises big

- Cooling, tech and power -

Intel’s new wafer-maker is a game changer

SiliconAngle has called this new piece of technology developed for Intel by ASML “the most advanced piece of semiconductor manufacturing equipment ever made.”

TWINSCAN EXE: 5000 High NA EUV

EUV lithography is a technology used in the semiconductor industry for manufacturing integrated services.
High Numerical Aperture Extreme Ultraviolet lithography is widely viewed as the future of the industry, and this new NA EUV scanner by Intel is the first of its kind. 

According to Intel, this extreme ultraviolet light is created by a powerful laser hitting a droplet of tin heated to almost 400,000° F.
The light is reflected off a mask containing a template of the desired circuit pattern, and then channeled through an optical system that uses some of the most accurate mirrors ever made, to etch those circuits onto the silicon.

Numerical Aperture measures an EUV machine’s ability to collect and focus light. The High NA EUV technology uses a more advanced optics design to project patterns onto silicon wafers, enabling both resolution and transistor size advances.

Here’s a video run-down by IBM about how EUV lithography works.

The first-of-its-kind tool was assembled this week at Intel’s research facility in Hillsboro, OR and is now undergoing calibration.

The TWINSCANE EXE is about the size of a double-decker bus, costing Intel a reported $350 million.

14A Manufacturing Process

“With the addition of High NA EUV, Intel will have the most well-rounded lithography toolbox in the industry, enabling the company to drive future process capabilities beyond Intel 18A into the second half of this decade,” said Intel Fellow and director of Lithography, Hardware and Solutions Mark Phillips.

He said this regarding Intel’s new 14A process, a manufacturing process that will see Intel using laser beams to carve transistors on silicon will a resolution of 8nm, vs the 13nm of their current 18A process.

Using the Intel 14A process, Intel will be able to print features on silicon chips up to 1.7 times smaller than those made by existing EUV machines. This opens the door to 2D feature scaling, resulting in up to 2.9 times greater density.

For intel, the 14A process is the future of their foundry business and (they hope) will be the innovation that will get them back to the mountaintop of chip-making.

More in cooling, tech and power

1. Both Meta and Google are developing air capture systems near data centers: Little is known about the different efforts of the two tech giants, but they both leverage low-grade waste heat from data centers for reuse, with the intent to significantly lower the cost of direct air capture.

2. TSMC Boss predicts over a trillion transistors: 3D chiplets will be the key to building the world's first one-trillion transistor GPU, says TSMC chairman Mark Liu and chief scientist H.-S. Philip Wong. They expect to hit the trillion transistor milestone somewhere around 2034. (Intel’s chief says they can get there by 2030.)

3. AMD and Nvidia unveil new AI chips: The new AMD Ryzen PRO 8000 Series chips are said to be the first “AI-enabled desktop processor for business users,” delivering “cutting-edge performance” and improved energy efficiency, the company said. At the same time, Nvidia just announced its new RTX A400 GPU, which aims to accelerate ray tracing and AI workloads.

Check this out

Rich Miller of Data Center Frontier (a legend in his own right) posted from Data Center World this week about Last Energy. They brought an SMR to the conference. The image links to the full post on Linkedin.

- Deals and Developments -

New solar provider to power 3 upcoming data centers

Donato Solar, a 2022 energy start-up from a famed Chicago entrepreneur, has received $14.5 million from SunRocket Capital to fund three solar-powered data center projects in Illinois.

These installations, approved in late 2022, are designed to not only supply power directly to the data centers but also to feed excess electricity back into the main grid during peak production times.

At least one project has already broken ground in Champaign County.

The funding is part of a broader strategy by Donato Solar to develop 100 MW of solar projects, with overall financing projected to reach around $100 million. Donato Solar's founder, Anthony Donato, is also the CEO of GAIL Technology Inc., a data center development firm.
These projects are slated to benefit from solar renewable energy credits (RECs) via the Illinois Power Authority's Illinois Shines program, aiming for a 15-year generation lifespan.

Microsoft wants to double its data center footprint

According to leaked documents reported by Business Insider, Microsoft is significantly increasing its data center capacity, currently possessing over 5GW.

The documents reveal a strategic ramp-up in server capacity linked to its AI advancements through a partnership with OpenAI. Notably, Microsoft plans to double its new data center capacity in the first half of fiscal 2024 by adding 1GW, aiming for 1.5GW by the first half of 2025.

Recent investments include $2.9 billion in Japan and $3.16 billion in the UK, where a new campus is planned at the former Eggborough power station site. Additionally, Microsoft has enhanced its AI capabilities by acquiring substantial GPU resources and developing its own AI accelerator, the Azure Maia 100. This expansion includes AI clusters now in 98 locations globally, supporting its extensive AI and cloud operations.

More Big Deals

• Tesla’s Austin data center is severely behind schedule: Musk had planned to build a Boring Company tunnel beneath the data center, and thus the floor cannot yet be laid. Among the 14000 Tesla employees fired recently was the construction manager on the project. The construction failure betrays a larger trend of dysfunction within the automaker.

• Rivos raises $250 million to build AI chips. Rivos has been mum about the specifics of their product, but we know they plan on designing chips based on the RISC-V architecture. Rivos is designing a server chip that combines a central processing unit and AI accelerator component that will be optimized for large language models and data analytics.

The End. What did you think?

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- Taylor