‘Every Die Wants to Live’: Inside Fab 28, Intel’s Elite Chip-Making Site

pcmag.com:

I've visited high-tech factories in China and Taiwan where motherboards and graphics cards are assembled. They are physical, visceral operations. Circuit boards pass through hot baths of molten solder; chips are put into place by chattering surface-mount machines. The emphasis on assembly and the tactile aspects leave a vivid impression: rows of workers intently fitting ports and heatsinks by hand, testers jacking diagnostic equipment into boards coming down the line. Conveyors clatter. Workers twitter. Box-folding machines make a din.

But a chip fabrication plant, usually called a fab, is not like that at all. It's a much lower-key and different dynamic. Most of the activity occurs out of sight, inside forbidding machines of colossal size and cost. But the impressions that stay with you are no less intense: Amber-yellow light suffusing parts of the clean room. A clean-room suit making you sweat despite the air conditioning. (Full-body synthetics don't breathe much.) And a constant, general electronic whirring accompanied by the hiss of pressurized air. Those are what stick with you.

How did we end up in a fab in Israel, wrapped up in a bunny suit, looking at how Intel manufactures the dies for its latest 10-nanometer processors dubbed "Alder Lake" and "Raptor Lake"? Let's backtrack.

Kiryat Gat is a small city in the upper southern half of Israel, situated in the middle of low, rolling, mostly empty hills. Occasional clusters of white buildings, far off in the distance, are visible as the miles tick away from Tel Aviv. The approach to Kiryat Gat feels a bit like hitting the outskirts of a slower small town well away from any major city in America's heartland, except the big blue Mediterranean and the Gaza Strip are