Intel gets approval to build $2.5B plant in China
496087
(InfoWorld) - The Chinese government has given Intel permission to build a $2.5 billion chip-manufacturing plant in Dalian, on China's northeastern coast. Intel plans to build a plant that will produce semiconductors, including microprocessors, on 300-millimeter wafers using a 90-nanometer manufacturing process, China's NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) said in an announcement (in Chinese) on its Web site. The plant will have a monthly production capacity of 52,000 chips, it said. The planned plant will be the first constructed by Intel in China, and it will operate along with test and assembly plants in Shanghai and Chengdu, a city in southwestern China. The NDRC announcement did not say when construction will begin on the plant or when it would begin production. Intel declined to comment on the NDRC announcement. "We haven't made any announcements, and we don't plan to," said Chuck Mulloy, a company spokesman. If the NDRC announcement is accurate, the Dalian plant would be a coup for the Chinese government, which has made the development of the country's semiconductor-manufacturing industry a national priority. The most advanced production technology currently used by Intel is a 65-nanometer process, and the company has plans to begin producing chips using a 45-nanometer process later this year. The lower the number, the smaller the size of the smallest feature that can be created on a chip. Moving to a more advanced production process means chips can be produced at a lower cost, since more can be crammed onto a single silicon wafer. More advanced process technologies also generally help to improve performance and reduce power consumption. While a planned plant in Dalian that uses a 90-nanometer process technology would lag several generations behind the most advanced technology used by Intel, the plant would still rank among the most sophisticated in the world. Ben Ames in Boston contributed to this report.
495585
One of the world's largest DRAM makers plans to invest $525.3 million on two chip factories in Asia.
466990
BEIJING - A group of state-owned Chinese companies has agreed to help finance and build an iron ore and infrastructure project worth nearly $2 billion (Australian) in the Pilbara region of western Australia.
401466
Intel has teamed up with Globio, a nonprofit educational group, to set up a wireless network for researchers at China&#39;s Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, the home of the endangered giant panda.
349652
By JORDAN ROBERTSON SAN JOSE, Calif. - Intel Corp. plans to spend between $1 billion and $1.5 billion to overhaul its semiconductor production facility in New Mexico to manufacture computer chips with next-generation technology.
64141
Intel, the world&#39;s biggest semiconductor maker, said on Monday that it had succeeded in building a test chip that packs 10 million transistors into an area the size of the tip of a ball-point pen.
220836
SHANGHAI, China - Micron Technology Inc., the leading US based memory maker, is planning to build a test and assembly facility in China, according to an Associated Press report Monday (Oct. 18), which cited a company executive in Shanghai as its source.
333678
Late yesterday afternoon, Intel announced it plans to invest as much as $1.5 billion in the retooling of its Fab 11X production site in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, so that it can produce 45-nanometer CPUs with its newly announced high-K + metal-gate transistor refinement technique during the second half of next year.
95645
Intel, the world&#39;s biggest semiconductor maker, said it is helping Chinese and Indian customers build personal computers that use the Linux operating system, an alternative to Microsoft&#39;s Windows software.
207908
The construction of a thin-film plant in China bodes well for long-term growth.
502792
(InfoWorld) - Intel plans to lay off 800 workers from a chip-making plant in Colorado by August, after Marvell Semiconductor began ordering those parts from another supplier, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Intel and Marvell have done business since June 2006, when Marvell bought Intel's XScale communications chip division and its 1,300 workers for $600 million. The sale was one component of Intel's sweeping corporate reorganization that also included the layoff of 10,500 employees. Marvell now sells thoseÂ Monahans chipsÂ to vendors of mobile phones, smartphones, and other consumer electronics handsets that use the processors to handle multimedia and mobile Web browsing, telephony, and GPSÂ navigation. Intel learned of Marvell's decision to find a new supplier around January and warned its workers that month that it planned to sell the Colorado Springs plant, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. He declined to say how much revenue Intel will lose when the contract ends. Intel plans to offer severance packages to its workers beginning in early August. The company also applied for a federal grant to help those workers learn new skills and find jobs, but the U.S. Department of Labor denied the request, he said. Now Intel is appealing the government's action and asking the department to reconsider its decision to withhold a grant from its Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. Under the TAA, the U.S. government gives aid to workers who lose their jobs through increased imports, providing them training, job search, and relocation allowances. Intel will continue to supply some components to Marvell from different plants, such as a facility in Santa Clara, Calif. Mulloy declined to say how many of its workers were employed making Marvell parts at that plant. Marvell confirmed it was shifting the business toÂ TSMC, saying its agreement with Intel had been created to last only through the transition of acquiring the cellular and handheld group. "TSMC is definitely the primary fab for us. It was never a long-term plan for Intel to keep manufacturing those chips," said Marvell spokeswoman Diane Vanasse. Marvell is struggling with its own problems, including a delisting threat by the Nasdaq stock exchange for failing to file quarterly reports for the last two terms of 2006, or its 2006 annual report. The company is also restating past results, after finding in May that CEO Sehat Sutardja and other top executives hadÂ illegally backdated stock optionsÂ to increase their value.
723683
HONG KONG China Power International Development, a unit of China&#39;s fifth-biggest electricity generator, is seeking as much as 2.57 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $330 million, in an initial public offering of stock, bankers involved in the sale said Monday
73255
Intel Corp. has built a new chip packed with a record 2 billion transistors, more than doubling the processing power of a line of its chips for supercomputers, the company said.
343416
Intel Corp  will start production this week at a new $3 billion factory in Arizona that is its first to mass-produce microchips with circuits almost a third smaller than before, the company said on Wednesday.
479779
French state-run company Areva  has unexpectedly agreed a $5 billion deal to build two nuclear power plants in China weeks after a U.S. rival appeared to have won a competition that dragged on for more than two years.
244553
As China's aviation industry takes off, General Electric Co's  orders for jet engines in that country have hit the $5 billion mark, the second-largest U.S. company by market capitalization said on Sunday.
669100
BHP Billiton plans an aggressive $US1.5-2 billion ($2.1-2.8 billion) near-doubling of its coking coal production over the next five years to meet the China-inspired surge in demand for carbon steel-making materials through mine expansions and developments