Intel’s potential exit from advanced manufacturing puts its Oregon future in doubt

Intel has been the driving force in semiconductor technology for nearly all its 57 years, setting the cadence for advances in computer technology that made the PC ubiquitous and the internet transformative.

For the last quarter-century, Intel has done that work at its Ronler Acres research campus in Hillsboro. Its Oregon scientists kept the company on the cutting edge with a succession of breakthroughs in transistor design, semiconductor materials and manufacturing technology.

Staying current on chip technology requires enormous spending — Intel’s capital budget is $18 billion this year — and the company said it isn’t selling enough of its own chips to pay the bills.

So if Intel can’t find a big outside client that wants to use Intel’s forthcoming 14A technology for its own chips, due in three or four years, the company said it might just give up.

“We face the prospect that it will not be economical to develop and manufacture Intel 14A and successor leading-edge nodes on a go-forward basis,” Intel wrote in a regulatory filing Thursday.

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