Intel Increases Assembly Supply for Coffee Lake

Intel Details China Facility to Assemble Boxed Coffee Lake

Last year, Intel revealed their new Coffee Lake processors to great fanfare. After a long run with mainstream quad cores, Intel finally upgraded their core count. With up to 6 cores for mainstream users, the allure was impossible to pass over. Due to huge demand, supply was quite short during the first couple months. To continue to keep up with demand, Intel is detailing a new facility to handle chip packaging.

After the initial debacle, Intel was able to get ahead of their supply issues. Part of the answer was the new facility in Chengdu, China, that helped packaged OEM Coffee Lake. The new facility helped to supplement the existing packaging facilities in Malaysia, China and Vietnam. Beyond just OEM chips, Intel will now have the plant package boxed retail CPUs as well. This means Core i7-8700K, Core i7-8700, Core i5-8600K, Core i5-8500, and Core i5-8400 CPUs will now come from this facility.

Intel Chips Should Perform Consistently

Due to being part of the Copy Exactly! program, the new chips should be identical to any other facility. Of course, users will always criticize this, such as when Costa Rica and Malaysia chips were pitted against each other. Since the closing down of Costa Rica, all of the packaging facilities are now in Asia. This no doubt leverage cheap shipping these days and being close to the emerging markets in Asia can’t hurt.

The increased supply at this stage of the product cycle is interesting, however. Part of this may be due to cheaper motherboards and chipsets coming out. This should move a greater volume of chips compared to more high-end ones. Intel is also continuing to expand their Coffee Lake lineup with more offerings as well. It will be interesting to see how much investment Intel will make into Coffee Lake before moving on.