Information Technology

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.

Vocollect Inc. relocates to its newly constructed 80,000-sf headquarters on August 15, 2003. Constructed adjacent to its current Wilkins Township, Pa., location, the four-story build-to-suit facility will include office, research, and production space, as well as state-of-the-art sound labs. The building also features a fitness center, recreation room, ergonomically designed workstations, and low-glare indirect lighting. Vocollect creates voice technology software and hardware.

The U.S. Army Medical Information Systems and Services Agency (USAMISSA) will occupy 75,000 sf in the North Beach Pavilion at Fort Sam Houston, one of three historic structures there under renovation. The lease is the first in the Fort Sam redevelopment project. USAMISSA is a provider of IT systems support to the Army Medical Department.

Iomega Corp. has completed construction of its new 40,000-sf headquarters in Torrey Pines, Calif. The $2-million facility was designed by Howard-Sneed Architecture and Design and constructed by Johnson & Jennings General Contracting.

Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI) is planning to construct its next major semiconductor manufacturing plant in Richardson, Texas. TI will invest approximately $3 billion in the 300mm silicon wafer plant in the years following groundbreaking in late 2005. The plant will employ up to 1,000 people when fully operational. The siting of the plant in Texas will provide over $300-million in new funding from private and public sources for the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas.  

Internet software maker Neoteris is relocating its headquarters from Mountain View to Sunnyvale, Calif. The new 44,702-sf facility triples Neoteris’ office space and expands available lab space for research and product development.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. will open a new chip design center in Hyderabad, India by year-end 2003. Cypress, based in Silicon Valley, currently operates 18 design centers worldwide. The new facility will complement Cypress’ current Indian design center in Bangalore. 

NCI Information Systems has contracted Chantilly, Va.-based Dietze Construction Group to perform the buildout of its new 75,500-sf office in Reston, Va. The project was designed by The M Group in Vienna, Va. 

Unisys, a worldwide IT services and solutions company, will occupy 280,000 sf of office space at Plaza America III. Located adjacent to Reston Town Center, the facility is part of the 1.2 million-sf Plaza America mixed-use development. The lease is part of Unisys’ 420,000-sf, $250-million expansion as it consolidates its federal government and global public sector divisions.

Roswell, N.M.-based Strategic Data Systems is developing a facility capable of hosting 1 million gigabytes of data in in two former Atlas F nuclear missile silos. Comprising 1.2 million sf, the 22-floor facility will have 100 servers on each floor. The massive computer storage system will be protected by a structure built to withstand most natural and manmade disasters, and features four-foot-thick concrete walls, 4,000-pound steel doors, and a diesel-powered backup generator. The silos will employ sixty workers once operational.

FASL LLC, a company merging the flash memory operations of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Fujitsu, is planning to build a chipmaking plant in Sunnyvale, Calif. AMD's Fab 25 plant in Austin, which manufactures only flash memory chips, will also become part of FASL.  

Hynix Semiconductor Manufacturing America is initiating a $100-million upgrade of its Eugene, Ore., wafer fabrication facility. Hynix has already invested over $1.6-billion in the facility, which will remain in operation throughout the project. Increasing production by over fifty percent, the upgrade will enable Hynix to manufacture new products for high-end applications in the United States server market. Hynix Semiconductor Manufacturing America is the U.S. subsidiary of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of Korea.   

Chip maker Actel Corp. is planning to move its corporate headquarters from Sunnyvale to Mountain View in fall 2003. Increasing square footage by over 20,000-sf, the 160,000-sf lease with Equity Office Properties will provide space to hire an additional 80 employees.

Austin-based Client Outsource Corp. will open a 125-seat call center in Bombay. The center will serve information technology and hardware companies in Austin and Silicon Valley that need a minimum of 25 call center seats.