Intel today announced the formation of a wholly owned subsidiary, Intel Federal LLC, to provide focus in order to better address new opportunities in working with the U.S. government. Intel said that the new subsidiary will focus on the High Performance Computing segment, including work on exascale computing with the U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies. In time, the subsidiary will be open to working with all branches of the government.

"Reaching supercomputer performance levels of a hundred times more powerful than today by 2018 will require the combined efforts of both industry and government. An ExaFlop supercomputer's performance is the equivalent of every person on Earth making about 150 million calculations per second. We look forward to collaborating more closely with the U.S. government on future supercomputing challenges," said Kirk Skaugen vice president and general manager of Intel?s Datacenter and Connected Systems Group. "The creation of Intel Federal demonstrates the strategic importance of these programs and will give us the ability to establish and maintain the unique processes, procedures and controls needed to develop and manage programs with the government."

Intel also announced that Dave Patterson has been appointed as president of Intel Federal LLC.

Initially Intel Federal will have offices in Oregon, California and the Washington, D.C. area. Over time Intel Federal will expand its focus to a wide variety of other programs within the government, Intel added.

No Move of Fab 24 To 22nm?

Staying with Intel, some analysts claim that the company has adjusted a planned upgrade for Fab 24, a chip plant the company operates in Ireland. Analysts at both Barclays and Citigroup asserted that Intel has decided to hold off on plans to upgrade Fab 24 to 22 nm process technology from the older technology now used in the facility.

Intel in January announced plans to invest $500 million in Fab 24 to prepare for a future technology node.