Back in March of this 12 months, Micron introduced that it will be getting out of the 3D XPoint enterprise fully, abandoning the expertise and placing its sole 3D XPoint fab up on the market. Now a brief few months later, Micron has secured a purchaser for the fab – and it’s not Intel. Rather it is going to be Texas Instruments who picks up the fab, shopping for it off of Micron for $900 million with plans to transform it over to analog and embedded processors.
The sale of the Lehi fab is the most recent and last chapter in Micron’s years-long efforts to unwind its non-volatile reminiscence three way partnership with Intel, IM Flash. Over the final decade Micron has acquired Intel’s share of the enterprise in a number of phases, culminating in buying the crown jewel of the previous partnership, the Lehi, Utah 3D XPoint fab, in 2018. Since then, Micron determined that it will dissolve its 3D XPoint partnership with Intel fully, culminating with the corporate abandoning the expertise fully, leaving Micron with a contemporary fab that it didn’t have an instantaneous want for.
To that finish, Micron put the fab up on the market earlier this 12 months, and has rapidly discovered a purchaser amidst the continued chip crunch. And whereas former accomplice (and present buyer) Intel was the most definitely candidate, they weren’t a shoe-in. As our personal Billy Tallis put it on the time “Intel is not guaranteed to be the buyer of the Lehi, UT fab. They’ve doubtless had opportunities to do so before as Intel and Micron unwound their partnership”.
Instead, the reminiscence fab might be going to Texas Instruments, who’s shopping for the constructing – however not the entire instruments. Though designed for 3D XPoint manufacturing, the Lehi fab is in any other case a contemporary, 2 million sq. foot fab that may course of 300mm wafers and is instantly able to being transformed to different makes use of; and that is the course TI might be taking issues. The firm is at present planning to equip the fab for the manufacturing of analog and embedded processors on the 65nm and 45nm nodes, with the power to take the fab “beyond those nodes as required.” For Texas Instruments this might be their fourth 300mm fab.
Meanwhile the remaining reminiscence instruments that TI isn’t shopping for might be additional property for Micron, who might be holding a few of them and promoting the remainder. According to the corporate’s press launch, a few of these instruments are getting redeployed to different Micron fabs, some have been bought, and but different instruments are nonetheless up on the market. Micron doesn’t point out who the instrument consumers are, however given the specialised nature of the gear, it wouldn’t be too stunning if Intel had been amongst them. Overall, Micron is valuing the instruments at $600 million, bringing the full worth of the transaction to a cool $1.5 billion.
The sale is predicted to shut on the finish of the 12 months, at which level TI might be placing out provides to retain the entire Lehi workers because the fab will get transformed over to TI’s analog and logic processes.
Finally, for the only firm to really use 3D XPoint reminiscence, the sale of the Lehi fab calls into query Intel’s personal 3D XPoint manufacturing plans. Having bought their share of the fab to Micron, Intel transitioned to being a buyer of the world’s solely 3D XPoint fab in late 2019 – an association that left the fab working within the crimson for Micron, as Intel’s 3D XPoint orders weren’t sufficient to totally make the most of the fab. IM Flash collectively developed Intel’s present (second-generation) 3D XPoint reminiscence expertise as nicely, and it’s believed that the Lehi fab has been producing all of that reminiscence for Intel.
So it stays to be seen simply how Intel might be impacted, because the sale places a operating clock on how for much longer they will purchase 3D XPoint reminiscence from the third-party fab. Eventually Intel might want to setup their very own fab – doubtless in Rio Rancho,…
