為了改善前景，英特爾通常會推介自己銷售的產品。但上周二，這家芯片巨擘一反常態，深入地剖析起自己的制造技術來。

英特爾這樣做旨在證明，盡管推出更小芯片的速度已經放慢，但摩爾定律依然有效——英特爾聯合創始人戈登?摩爾預言，芯片的晶體管密度至少每兩年就會翻一番。此舉的另一個目的是為自己不斷加大投入的芯片代工業務吸引更多客戶。

上周二，英特爾高層并未談論該公司可能怎樣支持下一波鏡面筆記本電腦、自動無人機和自動駕駛汽車。相反，他們解釋了英特爾怎樣把更多的晶體管和其他特性集成到晶圓中，從而造出更強大并且更省電的芯片。顯然，他們的意圖之一就是重置那些圍繞在摩爾定律四周的預期——由于近年來未能堅持此前幾十年的慣例，也就是每兩年就把晶體管的尺寸壓縮一次，英特爾已經遭到了投資者和分析師的懲罰。

過去五年中，英特爾的股價僅上升了28%，還不到標普500指數漲幅的一半。出現這樣的差距絕不只是因為英特爾的業績沒有達到預期，而是因為它錯過了移動化浪潮。個人電腦及其使用的英特爾芯片的銷售都受到了這股浪潮的沉重打擊。

幾十年來，英特爾一直奉行鐘擺（tick, tock）戰略。在工藝（tick）年，該公司改良芯片的途徑是加大晶體管密度和提高制程精細度，比如從32納米工藝轉向22納米工藝。在之后的架構（tock）年，制程工藝將保持不變，英特爾則會通過加入新的特性來提高芯片的性能。

但英特爾并不總是能按兩年一次的節奏來提高精細度。該公司的制程工藝從45納米變為32納米花了大約27個月，從32納米到22納米用了28個月，從22納米到目前的14納米則用了30個月。同時，從2014年9月開始，英特爾在制程工藝方面就再無進展。新的10納米芯片預計最終會在2017年底問世。

上周二的情況介紹旨在闡述英特爾用于改良芯片的所有其他技術，并且放大這個聚焦點。

該公司負責制造業務的執行副總裁斯泰西?史密斯對《財富》雜志表示，“這個世界不斷向前邁進”，英特爾則“一直在尋找那個優化點”，以便利用各種各樣的方式讓自己的芯片每年都得到提升。他說：“我們對消費者的承諾是我們每年都這么做一次。”

在活動中，總裁穆爾西?蘭德奇塔拉負責解釋英特爾的戰略調整。他說：“我們準備放棄鐘擺戰略，并用一種基于創新風潮的戰略取而代之。”蘭德奇塔拉指出，隨著英特爾開始采用新工藝來制造芯片，隨后幾年該公司每年都會有“一波”改進。

這次活動持續了四個多小時，它的另一個目的是吸引一個不斷擴大的群體，那就是能設計芯片但沒有半導體工廠的公司。以蘋果公司為例，iPhone 7用的就是蘋果自行設計的A10處理器，但它由別人制造，只不過生產方并非英特爾。

首席執行官科再奇一直要把英特爾塑造成供租用的芯片制造商，也就是用自己的先進設備制造其他公司設計的芯片，而不是只生產自行設計的產品。

經過大規模整合，半導體行業中有能力制造最先進芯片的公司已從10年前的13家變為如今屈指可數的幾家。除了英特爾，目前這份名單上只剩下三星、臺積電和2009年從AMD拆分出來的格羅方德。

執行副總裁史密斯說：“我們不僅僅是愿意這樣做，我們甘之如飴。”他還說周二的活動“有點兒像新人聯誼會，我們一直在建設這些產能，而且在此期間發布了一些消息……今天我們把所有這些和盤托出。”（財富中文網）

譯者：Charlie

審稿：夏林

Intel's efforts to improve its prospects usually involve pitching the products it sells, but on Tuesday the chip giant went in another direction, offering a deep dive into the company's manufacturing techniques.

The goal was to prove that Moore's Law—the prediction by the Intel co-founder that transistor density can double every two years or less—remains in force, even though the rate of introducing smaller-scale chips has slowed. A second aim was to attract more customers in Intel's growing effort to manufacture chips for others.

Instead of talking about how it might power the next wave of slick laptops, automated drones, or self-driving cars, Intel executives on Tuesday explained how the company could make its chips more powerful and energy efficient by cramming more transistors and other features onto the silicon wafers. One clear aim was to reset expectations around Moore's Law, as the company has been penalized by investors and analysts in recent years for failing to meet its decades-old strategy of shrinking the size of transistors every other year.

In the past five years, Intel's stock price has gained only 28%, less than half the gain of the S&P 500. But this lag is about far more than missed expectations, as the company missed the mobile wave, which has greatly hurt sales of PCs and the Intel processors that run them.

For decades, Intel (intc, +0.59%) followed what it called a "tick, tock" strategy. In one year, representing the "tick," it would improve its microprocessors by printing the transistors on the chips closer together, reducing the scale of the process, say, from 32 nanometers to 22 nanometers. In the second year, the "tock," the scale would stay the same and Intel would improve the chips by adding new features.

But Intel hasn't been able to hit the every-other-year schedule for reducing scale. To get from 45 nm to 32 nm took about 27 months, 28 months to go down from there to 22 nm and 30 months to shrink to the current 14 nm process. And that's where Intel has been stuck since September 2014. New 10 nm chips are finally expected towards the end of 2017.

The point of Tuesday's presentations was to explain—and magnify the focus on—all the other techniques Intel uses to improve its chips.

"The world moves on," Intel executive vice president Stacy Smith, who oversees the manufacturing side, tells Fortune. The company is "constantly looking to find that optimization point" of all the different methods for improving its chips every year. "And our commitment to our customers is that we do that on an annual cadence," he says.

It fell to Intel president Murthy Renduchintala during the presentations to explain the changing metaphor. "We're going to do away with the tick-tock metaphor and replace it with a metaphor based on waves of innovation," he said. As Intel moved to a new scale for printing chips, it could would follow for several years with annual "waves" of improvements, he explained.

Another goal of the over-four-hour program was to attract the growing legions of companies that design chips but don't own their own semiconductor manufacturing factories, for example, runs the iPhone 7 using its custom A10 chip which is made by others, though not Intel.

CEO Brian Krzanich has been building Intel's business as a chip maker for hire, printing up chips designed by other companies at its cutting-edge foundries, instead of using the factories exclusively for its own designs.

With massive consolidation in the semiconductor industry, only a handful of companies can even compete to make the most advanced chips, down from 13 ten years ago. Beyond Intel, the list currently includes only Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor and GlobalFoundries, the AMD spinoff created in 2009.

"It's something we're not just willing to do—we're embracing it," Smith says. Tuesday's presentations were "a bit of a coming out party," he says. "We've been building these capabilities, we've had some announcements along the way... but today we put it all together."