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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carl a. mehr who wrote (61205)	7/27/1998 8:19:00 AM
From: Dom B.	Respond to of 186894

Thanks for the espionage report...Now, enjoy your vacation, as the market tanks due to Billy's subpoena and the upcoming constitutional crisis. Don't forget his press sec resigned before all this. Meantime, I hope ya got T. hehehe...db

To: carl a. mehr who wrote (61205)	7/27/1998 2:20:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Carl - Re: "Paul, please tell us what these people are so busy doing on a Sunday evening." The Ronler Acres site is the location of Intel's D1B Wafer Fab Development. The facility should be recognizable as a "Fab" from the rear of the building where the Facilities are located. Typical FAB's can be recognized by several huge tanks in the rear. One or more very large tanks , usually white, should contain DI water for supplying the FAB with DeIonized water. Located nearby should be a series of horizontal tubes - RO (Reverse Osmosis) used in the first stage of removing impurities from the water, before subsequent treatment with ion-exchange tanks. Nitrogen generation facilities and/or Liquid Nitrogen tanks should also be visible. Out in a remote corner of the facilities pad another tank should be visible - to hold liquid hydrogen - CLEARLY MARKED as EXPLOSIVE. (That is why it is "remote"). Intel's production fabs run 6 days a week, with 2 12 hour shifts per week. On the 7'th day, line maintenance personnel use the last day for machine Preventative Maintenance (PMs) - cleaning, repairing, etc. the exotic production machines used in the fab. The schedule generally runs with production beginning at 6:00 or 6:30 PM Sunday until 6:00 or 6:30 the following Saturday. My guess is that Intel is also running their development fabs on a similar schedule. What you saw must have been the weekly "start-up" of fab D1B. Remember - it is only a development fab at this point. What are they developing? Current activity is putting the finishing touches on the 0.18 micron process. However, a significant number of engineers are working on process modules for the upcoming 0.13 micron process. The people you saw were probably mostly fab operators and technicians processing the small lots for development as well as supporting line maintenance personnel. The construction site nearby may be Intel's new development fab for 300 mm wafer development - to be completed in the year 2000. You should not that Intel develops their new processes in essentially production fabs, brings up the new processes and new products into volume production, and then turns over these fabs to the manufacturing divisions. The development people then get to move into a NEW FAB and start the process all over again. {===================================} Thanks for the report Carl and I commend you on your diligence and interest in Intel and their operations! Paul