High Tech

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp. opened its $13.7 million Information Technology Innovation Center in Folsom, Calif. in February 2004. The goal of the 5,000-sf showroom is to boost market demand and stimulate research and development innovation. The center features a large reception area and meeting space, a digital home display, a digital office display, a mobility bar, a rear teleconferencing room, and a disruptive technology lab.

Chip equipment maker Credence Systems Corp. has relocated its headquarters from Fremont to Milpitas, Calif. The new facility will increase space for R&D operations as well as housing manufacturing, engineering, marketing, sales, and administrative functions. Credence will consolidate its 300 Northern California employees at the new headquarters.

Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard will invest $1 billion in an existing Singapore factory over the next five years to expand and upgrade its facilities, supporting a new manufacturing line producing top-end servers and printers including the “superdome server”.

Advanced Micro Devices, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is constructing a $2.4 billion 300mm chip manufacturing plant in Dresden, Germany. Volume production is expected to begin at the new facility in 2006.

Nanomanufacturing company Molecular Imprints is planning to expand its operations in Austin, Texas with the lease of 19,000 sf near its current 16,000-sf location. Molecular Imprints will also open new distribution centers in Germany and Japan for its semiconductor chip imprinting machinery.

Infineon Technologies North America Corp. has opened a new 100,000-sf facility in Cary, N.C. Infineon, based in Munich, Germany, will use the space to accommodate semiconductor chip design and management operations. The company plans to invest a minimum of $8-million in the facility over the next five years.

Ktech is moving into an 83,400-sf facility in Sandia, N.M., to expand its commercial activity in the semiconductor, sensor, material coatings, and robotics industries. Ktech is a Sandia National Laboratories contractor, supplying operations, engineering, and maintenance services to the Department of Energy’s Pulsed Power Research Center. Ktech’s operations were previously located in six offices in the Albuquerque area.

Marvell Semiconductor will locate its new headquarters in four buildings recently purchased in Santa Clara, Calif. Totaling nearly 900,000-sf, the buildings are sited on almost 34 acres. Marvell, a fabless semiconductor subsidiary of Marvell Technology Group, will engage in operations including research and development, administration, and sales and marketing in the new facilities. The two-year relocation will begin in early 2004.

Celestica has relocated within the city of Raleigh from 26,000 sf to 70,000 sf at the Globe Center Corporate Park. Celestica, a manufacturer of products for technology companies on an outsource basis, will house operations including printed circuit assembly, systems assembly, engineering design, and sales in the facility. The relocation project entailed a $2-million investment.

Maxim Integrated Products has purchased a San Antonio warehouse formerly occupied by Phillips Semiconductors for $40 million. The 330,000-sf facility is sited on a 168-acre campus and features a submicron 8-inch wafer fab able to produce eight million components annually. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Maxim expects to resume production of silicon wafers in the new facility by year-end 2004.

San Jose State University has opened its newly updated Microelectronics Process Engineering Fabrication Facility at the College of Engineering. The 3,400-sf fab and academic program were made possible by donations from corporate sponsors including Intel Corp. and Applied Materials Inc., as well as funding from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the National Science Foundation.

MMC Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Milpitas-based Maxtor Corp., will expand its disk-drive media manufacturing operations with the lease of 183,000-sf in Fremont, Calif. Housing 65,000 sf of cleanrooms, the facility will be occupied in addition to MMC's 140,000-sf location in San Jose.

SUNY Albany is working with International Sematech to create an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) Resist Test Center at Albany Nanotech. Slated for completion in April 2004, the center will be housed in the NanoFab II facility which is currently under construction. The center’s nine employees will test a photosensitive chemical called resist that can transfer a circuit pattern onto a semiconductor wafer. Sematech’s $403 million computer chip research center is also located at Albany Nanotech.

Oasis Semiconductor is nearly quadrupling its size with a move from 7,353 sf to 30,000 sf at Waltham Weston Corporate Center in Waltham, Mass. Oasis is a supplier of silicon chips to the office automation market. The move will shift Oasis from the first to the fourth floor of the six-story, 300,000-sf building.

TDK Semiconductor has relocated its worldwide headquarters from Tustin to a new building in Irvine, Calif. Located in the Irvine Spectrum business park, the facility will house the design center, marketing, sales, engineering, finance, and administration. TDK Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based TCK Corp., produces analog and mixed-signal products for digital cable and satellite applications.