This may have already been posted, Stan. :0)
Intel Arizona Chip Plant Getting $2 Billion Upgrade
Tue Feb 18, 7:00 PM ET Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!
news.yahoo.com
By Duncan Martell
SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news), the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer, said on Tuesday it would spend $2 billion to upgrade an Arizona plant with cutting-edge chip-making technology, saying it wanted to outpace rivals when the market began to recover.
The plant will begin processing roughly dinner-plate-sized silicon wafers with average features on the chips as close together as 65 nanometers in late 2005, Intel said at a developer conference in San Jose, California.
By using larger wafers, which are cut into chips, and fitting transistors closer together, Santa Clara, California-based Intel can produce chips more efficiently and create microprocessors that run cooler and faster.
"We always position ourselves with enough capacity to grow faster than the industry," Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett told reporters in a round-table discussion ahead of his keynote speech to some 4,000 hardware and software engineers here.
Microchip makers have cut back on building new plants and buying new chip making equipment amid the worst downturn on record in the semiconductor and telecommunications industries and the overall information technology sector.
"By most accounts we're at the bottom and we've only got one direction to up and that's up," Barrett said at a press conference following his speech.
Barrett returned to familiar themes for the 34-year-old company, articulating his belief that computing and communications are converging, a trend that will spur demand and boost profits at technology companies.
During the Internet boom of the late 1990s, Intel invested aggressively in the communications and networking industries, acquiring more than two dozen small companies. Intel's communications business is still losing money and it's unclear when it will move into the black, Barrett said.
"It's trying to recover, but it's very hard," Barrett said at the press briefing. |
