$3.5 billion fab

today announced plans to build a new 300-millimeter (mm) wafer fabrication facility at its site in Kiryat Gat, Israel.

The new factory, called Fab 28, will produce microprocessors in the second half of 2008 on 45 nanometre (nm) process technology. Construction on the $3.5 billion project, Intel’s second 45nm factory, is set to begin immediately.

When completed, Fab 28 will become Intel’s seventh 300mm wafer facility. The structure will include approximately 200,000 square feet of clean room space. Over the next several years the project will create more than 2,000 Intel jobs at the site.

Intel currently operates five 300mm fabs that provide the equivalent manufacturing capacity of about eight older generation 200mm factories. Those factories are located in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico in addition to Ireland where an expansion of Intel’s 300mm capacity in Ireland (Fab 24-2) is scheduled to begin operations in the first quarter of next year. In July Intel announced plans to invest more than $3 billion to build another 300mm fab, Fab 32 in Chandler, Arizona.

Manufacturing with 300mm wafers increases the ability to produce semiconductors at a lower cost compared with more commonly used 200mm wafers. Intel’s 45nm technology, which will first be put in high volume production at Fab 32, will allow chip circuitry to be built at about half the size of today’s standard 90nm technology.