Mass Production at Intel's 14 nanometer Node Begins This Year

In addition to the industry's first fully-patterned 450 mm wafer, Intel announced that its 14 nanometer silicon fabrication node at three of its fabs will begin this year. The next leap forward from 22 nm, on which two of the company's CPU generations "Ivy Bridge" and "Haswell" are based, the 14 nm node will eventually facilitate production of the company's 5th generation Core "Broadwell" processors, which are due to arrive in 2014. Given the pace at which the 14 nm node is being developed, some of the first Broadwell Core chips, at least engineering samples, will be released to the industry within 2013. Among the three Intel facilities with 14 nm nodes are D1X, located in Oregon; Fab 42, located in Arizona; and Fab 24, located in Ireland.