Intel Bolsters 2 U.S. Facilities with $345M in Upgrades
Online staff -- EDN, September 15, 2005
While Intel Corp. announced today the establishment of an Asia-Pacific R&D group in Shanghai, the company demonstrated its dedication to manufacturing in the U.S. with plans to invest $345 million in two of its existing sites in Colorado and Massachusetts.
The investments will be used to increase the capacity of the wafer fabs in Hudson, Mass. (Fab 17) and in Colorado Springs, Colo. (Fab 23), the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip leader reported today.
Both fabs are 200mm facilities that primarily produce chipsets communications and flash memory components for a variety of Intel platforms.
“These investments will increase the capacity of our 200mm manufacturing network to support our platform initiatives and will give us additional supply flexibility across a range of products,” said Bob Baker, senior VP and general manager of Intel’s technology and manufacturing group, in a statement.
“For Intel, manufacturing is a key competitive advantage that serves as the underpinning for our business and allows us to provide customers with leading-edge products in high volume. The decision to invest in our sites in Colorado and Massachusetts reflects the strategic importance of these facilities and our outstanding team of employees,” he noted.
In Colorado Springs, Intel said it will $190 million as part of an upgrade to a second clean room within Fab 23 that will allow it to complete final processing steps for microprocessors that were produced on 300mm wafers at other Intel locations prior to final testing and packaging. Construction on the project is set to begin immediately, which will allow processing of advanced microprocessors in the second half of 2007. The project is expected to create several hundred new jobs in Colorado Springs over the next three years.
In Hudson at Fab 17, Intel’s $155 million investment will be used to increase overall capacity by adding new manufacturing equipment and reconfiguring portions of the factory in order to manufacture a variety of logic products, including chipsets to support Intel’s platform initiatives for mobile, desktop and server systems. This investment in Hudson will result in the creation of more than 300 new manufacturing jobs.
Finally, Intel said it would purchase office property in Ft. Collins, Colo. to be used as a design center to house a portion of the company’s Itanium processor design team.
