Washington (DC) – Today, Intel said it will invest $7 billion over the next two years to deploy new 32 nm manufacturing capabilities. The money will be used to upgrade existing factories in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico.
Intel said this move will support 7000 "high-wage, high-skill jobs" in the U.S., where the company employs approximately 45,000 people. While Intel did not say any new positions will be created, we guess that maintaining positions is good news at this time. The company did not forget to mention that it's committed to these latest investment upgrades in the U.S. despite the fact that it manufacture 75% of its chips in the U.S. while 75% of its sales are generated overseas.
Considering that the first 32 nm chips, code-named Westmere (a Nehalem shrink), are expected to debut in Q4 of this year, this 32 nm upgrade announcement actually seems to be a bit late and may indicate the company will not ramp 32 nm production as quickly as it did with the current 45 nm generation. At this time, 32 nm production capability is finalized at the firm's Hillsboro, Oregon campus and will be moved via its traditional "copy exactly" process to other locations.
The addition of new production capacities, however, may be much less time consuming, as the company usually tries to replicate production environments across multiple locations in order to achieve similar manufacturing yields - a strategy that goes down to factors such as air quality, temperature and geologic stability. By simply upgrading fabs, many of the usual concerns should prove to be (expensive) non-issues.
AMD is also in the process of preparing a 32 nm fab, which will be a new factory in New York State. Its proposed Luther Forest fab is expected to cost about $3.2 billion and will be run by the firm's spun-off manufacturing arm. AMD recently received final approvals to construct the fab and isn't running behind schedule just yet (the original construction start was scheduled for the time frame between July 2007 and July 2009).
The proposed factory will be roughly equal in size to 21 football fields, and is about the same size as Intel's largest current fab, which is in Kiryat Gat, Israel.
Intel said this move will support 7000 "high-wage, high-skill jobs" in the U.S., where the company employs approximately 45,000 people. While Intel did not say any new positions will be created, we guess that maintaining positions is good news at this time. The company did not forget to mention that it's committed to these latest investment upgrades in the U.S. despite the fact that it manufacture 75% of its chips in the U.S. while 75% of its sales are generated overseas.
Considering that the first 32 nm chips, code-named Westmere (a Nehalem shrink), are expected to debut in Q4 of this year, this 32 nm upgrade announcement actually seems to be a bit late and may indicate the company will not ramp 32 nm production as quickly as it did with the current 45 nm generation. At this time, 32 nm production capability is finalized at the firm's Hillsboro, Oregon campus and will be moved via its traditional "copy exactly" process to other locations.
The addition of new production capacities, however, may be much less time consuming, as the company usually tries to replicate production environments across multiple locations in order to achieve similar manufacturing yields - a strategy that goes down to factors such as air quality, temperature and geologic stability. By simply upgrading fabs, many of the usual concerns should prove to be (expensive) non-issues.
AMD is also in the process of preparing a 32 nm fab, which will be a new factory in New York State. Its proposed Luther Forest fab is expected to cost about $3.2 billion and will be run by the firm's spun-off manufacturing arm. AMD recently received final approvals to construct the fab and isn't running behind schedule just yet (the original construction start was scheduled for the time frame between July 2007 and July 2009).
The proposed factory will be roughly equal in size to 21 football fields, and is about the same size as Intel's largest current fab, which is in Kiryat Gat, Israel.
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