According to congressional sources, the US government is preparing to invest $3.5 billion in Intel to enable the chip manufacturer to produce advanced semiconductors for military projects.
It is reported that this funding has been included in a rapidly advancing spending bill passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, which will give Intel a dominant position in the lucrative defense market.
The report states that this funding will last for three years and be used for the "Secure Enclave" program. This funding comes from a $39 billion Chips and Science Act funding pool aimed at convincing chip manufacturers to produce semiconductors in the United States. Data shows that over 600 companies have expressed interest in obtaining this funding.
It is understood that "Secure Enclave" is a secure coprocessor independent of the main processor, which includes a hardware based key manager that can provide additional security protection. The key data is encrypted in a secure partition on-chip (SoC) system, which includes a random number generator. The security isolation zone also maintains the integrity of its encryption operations, even in the event of device kernel intrusion.
In fact, there were reports in November last year that Intel was negotiating with the government to receive subsidies of $3 billion to $4 billion from the project. According to media statistics, Intel will receive incentives under the Chip Act totaling over $10 billion, including subsidies and loans.
The US Department of Commerce stated in a statement, "We are still evaluating the impact of funding on the program. The Department of Defense looks forward to continuing to work with Congress to implement the Chip and Science Act in a way that promotes our economy and national security." The Senate is expected to pass the bill before Saturday's deadline.
At the same time, the Ministry of Commerce is preparing to announce billions of dollars in rewards to advanced chip manufacturers such as Intel, as well as TSMC and Samsung Electronics. And all these efforts are aimed at enhancing the ability of the United States to manufacture chips domestically.
At present, the Ministry of Commerce has announced three appropriations, including a smaller amount allocated to BAE Systems, a multinational arms industry and aerospace equipment company. In addition, a sum of $1.5 billion was allocated to semiconductor wafer foundry company GlobalFoundries.
However, these efforts have also been questioned by some politicians. Last year, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Maria Cantwell, top Republican and Democratic member of the Military Committee Roger Wicker, and Jack Reed raised concerns about providing rewards to a company to promote its establishment of a secure quarantine zone plan, which would cost more than obtaining these chips.