Intel begins mass production of Meteor Lakes with EUV lithography in Irish factory

Intel has started mass production of chips on the 7nm process in Ireland. Intel is baking chips with EUV lithography for the first time at the Leixlip factory. Intel will mainly use the fab for its own Meteor Lake processors.

Intel opened the factory on Friday during a ceremony. Fab 34 is located in Leixlip, Ireland and will be a key production site for the first mass production of Intel 4 chips. Intel 4 is what was previously known as Intel’s own 7nm process, which Intel previously said should be competitive with competitor TSMC’s 5nm nodes. Intel says that Intel 4 processors should ultimately be about twenty percent more efficient than those of the previous generation: Intel 7.

Intel is using EUV lithography for the first time in the Irish fab. This is used to create, among other things, the compute tiles of the Meteor Lake CPUs. Thanks to the use of EUV for a number of critical layers, Intel can achieve a higher transistor density than was possible with the older Intel 7. Intel had previously announced that it wanted to make Meteor Lake processors on Intel 4 in 2023. These are also the processors that Intel announced earlier this month and that are produced in the factory.