Intel Investors - Intel plans new Development Fab in Oregon.
A new 300MM Wafer Fab development site - D1D - will be started this year - "tentatively" scheduled for completion in 2003.
This follows Intel's ongoing strategy of taking the current Development site (now D1C) - which has 0.13 micron copper process running in development and small scale production - and ramping it into a full production wafer fab.
Simultaneously, a NEW development fab is built and the Development Engineering teams are moved to the new fab to begin the process all over again - at the next process/wafer size level.
Paul
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dailynews.yahoo.com
Tuesday June 26 5:17 PM ET
Intel Planning $2B Chip Plant
HILLSBORO, Ore. (AP) - Computer chip giant Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) is planning to build a $2 billion chip-manufacturing plant in Oregon this summer.
The company filed a development review application Friday with the city for the three-story, 175,000-square-foot facility.
Intel said it hopes to have a concrete slab and part of the building shell in place by the end of this year.
The chip industry is in a slump, but company spokesman Bill MacKenzie said the plant won't open until 2003, when the economic dip is past.
``If the market continues to show weakness through the balance of this year, you won't see the project move that fast,'' he said.
The new plant will likely add up to 3,000 jobs in the area, he said. The Santa Clara, Calif., company has its largest base of operations in Hillsboro and its Oregon facilities employ about 16,000.
``Even in a worst-case scenario with the chip market, they still have to do this,'' said George Burns, a consultant with Strategic Marketing Associates. ``You want to do the development phase right. Otherwise you get all kinds of screw-ups down the line when you get into volume manufacturing.''
Intel's manufacturing strategy is to create an experimental fabrication plant where it perfects new production processes, then quickly transform it into a high-volume manufacturing facility while deploying technologies developed there throughout the company in a process known as copy exact.
This spring, the company opened a new development plant, D1C. It was one of the first chip plants in the world designed to make chips with circuits measuring .13 microns - about 1/1000th the width of a human hair - on larger 300 mm silicon wafers.
The 300 mm wafers have 225 percent more surface area than the current standard, and they should cut Intel's manufacturing costs by 30 percent to 35 percent when D1C goes into full production next year or in 2003.
The new plant, known as D1D, will also use 300 mm wafers.
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