Elon Musk, CEO and founder of Tesla, revealed during a recent earnings call that the company will be the first customer to use Intel’s upcoming 14A process nodes. The man says that he plans on using the blue chipmaker’s chips to…well, make Tesla’s own AI chip at the ambitious and Terafab facility.
Terafab, which is still under construction, is expected to produce up to one million wafers per month upon becoming operational. Announced in March of this year, the facility is a joint effort between several of Musk’s companies, as well as Intel. And by Musk-owned, that list includes Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI.
The Tesla Terafab facility will initially be located next to the Tesla Giga Texas factory, and once vertically scaled up, the fab is expected to produce one terawatt of AI Compute power per year, supporting all of its parent company’s auto, robotics, and AI businesses.
“Intel is excited to partner with us on the some of the core manufacturing technologies, so we plan to use Intel’s 14A process which is state-of-the-art,” Musk said at the Thursday earnings call, adding that while the 14A chipmaking technology is “not yet totally complete,” but “given that by the time Terafab scales up, 14A will be probably fairly mature or ready for prime time.”
Intel plans to debut its 14A process sometime in 2027, with full volume manufacturing expected to kick off next year, too. For the uninitiated, 14A is basically the official term for 1.4nm; the “A” is the unit of length or measurement, if you will, of Angstrom.
Getting back on point, 14A will feature PowerDirect, the chipmaker’s 2nd generation backside-power delivery network, and RibbonFET 2, also its 2nd generation gate-all-around (GAA) technology. Additionally, and more for the consumer segment, the process will introduce Turbo Cells, which is the brand’s boosted cell technology that increases performance-per-watt.
(Source: Nikkei)
