September 12, 2006 – Infineon has officially opened its first Asia-based frontend power fab, in the Kulim Hi-Tech Park in northern Malaysia. The $1 billion site, complementing similar power sites in Austria and Germany, will have maximum capacity of about 100,000 wafer starts/month (200mm wafers), producing power and logic chips, such as the CoolMOS and IGBT chips for industrial applications, and SMART-Power chips for use in automotive applications. Groundbreaking at the site started in Feb. 2005 and completed in Feb. 2006, with ramp-up beginning in August.

“Our new fab in Kulim is a strategic investment into our future and an opportunity to address the world’s growing demand for more efficient power controls in industrial, computing and household appliances by enabling variable speed-controlled electric motors with higher performance,” stated Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart, president and CEO of Infineon.

Infineon held a 9.3% share in the $11.35 billion power semiconductor market in 2005. Officials believe the new Malaysia site could potentially double the company’s global sales of power chips to $2.5 billion by 2010, noted an Associated Press report.