The exact location remains confidential, the story behind it is fascinating: Intel operates a secret warehouse in Costa Rica that stores outdated technology from the last decade. The company even had to use eBay to build it up, and now they have big plans.
It’s a fascinating look behind the scenes of the tech scene that the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) offers in a recent article. A few years ago, those responsible at Intel noticed a major problem: The company had not established a clear process that ensures that its own outdated technology is cataloged and stored. Reliable access to these components is almost indispensable for tests in the event of security gaps, as the chips remain widespread years after the official end of sales.
But how do you build up a complete warehouse when you have published countless new product lines for years, but you have not cataloged them reliably yourself? “We actually had to go to eBay and look for these platforms,” the WSJ quoted Mohsen Fazlian, general manager of Intel’s product assurance and security division. The goal: to convert an already established research and development laboratory in Costa Rica into a warehouse for all the chips that the company had released over the past decade.
After planning began in 2018, the first long-term storage facility for discarded Intel hardware was able to go into operation around a year later. The company currently stores around 3000 individual products here, but this is expanded by around 50 new entries every week. 25 technicians ensure that Intel’s engineers all over the world request certain configurations and then test them via the cloud. According to Intel, there are currently a thousand such inquiries a month.
The company already has big plans for its legacy warehouse: next year the space is to be doubled to around 5,000 square meters, which will also increase the capacity to around 6,000 items. For the responsible Intel manager Mohsen Fazlian, one thing is particularly important: His company has now established a reliable system for cataloging its own hardware: “Hopefully I will never have to look for Intel hardware on eBay again.”
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