GlobalFoundries has designed its Fab 8 computer chip facility in Malta to be “lights-out” — a term used to describe heavily automated factories where few humans are needed on the production floor.
Former Fab 8 General Manager Norm Armour, who recently left the company, said at a company conference in Silicon Valley at the end of August that the Fab 8 clean room — which has enough space to hold eight football fields — could be totally automated by 2015, according to press accounts.
GlobalFoundries spokesman Travis Bullard confirmed Armour’s remarks but he said the company’s employment projections shown in presentations to business and civic groups around the region were always based on a lower number of clean room employees in contact with manufacturing equipment — known as “tools” — than is found at other fabs around the world.