4 ms·
All of the "low-nm" process fabs on that wiki page are in the US (with one in Ireland).
by creato 3y ago
All of the "low-nm" process fabs on that wiki page are in the US (with one in Ireland).
- gen220 3y agoI went down a bit of a rabbit hole to try and find manufacturing stats per fab, and it's pretty difficult to find. First, it's worth noting that most of the <300nm fabs in the U.S. are really new. The Oregon facility was historically the most relevant fab, Arizona seems to be (potentially?) supplanting it from a design and capacity POV. But the Israeli fab really shouldn't be discounted, they employ 12k people in Israel. I can't find numbers on production output, but that headcount is a similar OOM to the Oregon plant. Most of their successful, recent designs came from Israel, too. The Ireland fab employs 4.5k people. There's 22k in Oregon, unclear on the breakdown of manufacturing and R&D/non-manufacturing roles. As I understand it from said rabbit hole, they do a lot of design and "proofing" manufacturing of low-nm processes in Oregon, but rely on Ireland and Israel to scale-up. It seems that the recent (i.e. post-9/11) Arizona plants are more geared towards high-volume production. Regardless of what calculations went into those decisions, they're a hedge against political instability in Israel.