AMD looks for love while Intel gets hot and sweaty

AMD has reiterated plans for a new fab, to be built by 2004. The company has clearly put its top creative brains on the team charged with dreaming up the name for this forthcoming facility. So far, it is expected to be called Fab 35.

It has launched a search for its perfect partner for its long-anticipated new 300mm-wafer fab, which it says is in the advanced stages of planning.

The Fab is expected to cost around $4 billion to get up and running - and is expected to be complete by 2004. AMD chief operating officer (and heir apparent to Jerry Sanders) Hector Ruiz said the project was likely to be a joint venture in order to spread the risk, and cost.

At the time of writing AMD could not be reached for comment about its probable location.

Intel meanwhile, is absolutely certain that it will not be building more fabs in California. Chipzilla CEO, Craig Barrett, says that the botched deregulation of the power industry has left the state with expensive and unreliable power. He said that Intel would be expanding in other areas of America and Ireland instead.

As even the smallest variation in power can ruin wafers, the power situation in California is a serious issue for the manufacture of chips.

Intel says that it has trimmed its own power consumption by ten per cent, keeping lights off when possible and turning air conditioning down. Presumably this also provides Intel staffers with an informal sauna environment to work in.

According to the Boston Globe, Barrett commented: "Nuclear power is the only answer, but it is not politically correct." In the meantime, he makes his own small contribution to resolving the problem by leaving his office lights off during the day, relying instead on that big old ball of gas called the sun. How considerate. ®

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