Investment & expansion
Infineon Technologies formally opened the second module of its memory chip assembly, package and test facility in Portugal. The company is investing a total of EUR230mn in the new module at the Vila do Condo site.
Work on expanding the facility started autumn 2003 and full capacity will be reached by mid-2006. It is planned to create about 500 new jobs in the process, increasing the workforce in Porto to 1500. The new module is to be formally opened on June 16, 2004, in the presence of Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso. The first products are already rolling off the production line. Volume production began with 256Mbit devices in BGA packages.
Infineon says that it needs the facility because of steadily expanding front-end capacities, for example with the ramp-up of its 300mm fab in Dresden, Germany, and with the planned start up of 300mm production in Richmond, USA. Most of the wafers arriving for further processing at the plant come from Dresden and Richmond. Up to 600mn chips per year are planned as the maximum capacity when the new module is completed. This represents more than double the capacity as a result of the expansion. The first module has around 5000m2 of clean room area and the second about 7000m2.
Dr Michael Majerus, chief financial officer of the Memory Products group, reports: "When we have reached full capacity in Porto, about 30-40% of our global memory chip production will be assembled and tested here."
The memory chip assembly and test plant was founded in 1996. Initial investment in the first module amounted to EUR330mn of which EUR140mn was used to modernise the plant between mid-2000 and mid-2003. Infineon has invested a total of EUR560mn at the Porto location.
Intel has begun 300mm wafer processing at its Fab 24 in Leixlip, Ireland. In addition, the $2bn facility features Intel's leading 90nm process technology. Fab 24 is the company's fourth 300mm manufacturing facility and Intel's third fab to manufacture semiconductors with 90nm circuitry.
The larger 300mm wafers enable lower production costs, reducing the costs per individual component by some 30%. Additionally, the new technology will use 40% less energy and water for each chip than previous generation technologies.
The 90nm process enables a doubling of transistor density on a given integrated chip of the same size. It is also the first in the industry to use strained silicon to speed up carrier flow and hence the switching of transistors. Strained technology can also be used to lower power consumption if additional performance is not required.
Intel has manufactured semiconductors in Ireland since 1990. Other Intel 300mm fabs are located in Hillsboro, Oregon (D1C and D1D), and Rio Rancho, New Mexico (Fab 11X).
