East Fishkill, New York–Oct. 12, 2000–IBM plans to invest $2.5 billion in building a technologically advanced fab in East Fishkill, New York. The company’s facility will combine–reportedly, for the first time–copper interconnects, silicon-on-insulator (SOI), and low-k dielectric insulation on 300mm (12-inch) wafers. IBM also expects to be the first chipmaker to mass-produce semiconductors at line widths below 0.10 micron–more than 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.
“The world of e-business is driving a massive build-out of the infrastructure of computing and communications,” says IBM Chairman and CEO Lou Gerstner. “That, in turn, drives demand for critical technical components like chips. Demand is white-hot in three critical segments–chips for big servers, chips to power the explosion in Internet access devices, and chips in the networking equipment that tie everything together.”
The new fab is planned to begin operation during the second half of 2002, reaching full production by 2003.