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TAP TIMES -6- JANUARY 2022
The BIG Boom! (from 3)
What are mobile phone sales worth to the
industry? According to IDC, chip sales will
have been worth $147 billion when the
books close on 2021.
Fab drivers
Pushed hard by the semiconductor short-
age, and willing to gamble that demand
for chips will remain sky-high, the in-
dustry’s mega-vendors are opening their A crane does the heavy lifting at Intel’s Hillsboro, Oregon D1X fab
expansion (Intel)
purse strings for new fabs, fab expansions
and assembly and test. ford grad with a master’s in engineering
and computer science, was lured from his
Three of IC Insights’ Top 10 chip makers, job as president of VMWare for his techni-
including #1 Samsung Electronics, #2 In- cal savvy. In his earlier Intel days, he was
tel and #8 Texas Instruments have joined known as the architest of the 80486 CPU.
the fray to site new fabs.
No room for Swan
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The company ousted Robert Swan, CEO
(TSMC), which fabs semiconductors for from January 2019-February 2020 and the
maga-giants (including Apple and Intel) company’s former chief bean counter, to
and produced a 2020 revenue of $37.9 make room for Gelsinger. Industry percep-
billion, will continue its inroads into the tion has it that Intel’s manufacturing prow-
U.S.A. ess under Swan, an accountant not an en-
gineer by training, was unimpressive for a
company of Intel’s historic greatness.
As Gelsinger has settled in to the top post,
he has pursued an aggressive bricks and
mortar building program not seen for de-
cades at the Silicon Valley-headquartered
pioneer.
Fourteen fabs, six locations
According to Intel, the company operates
14 fabs worldwide at six locations. U.S.
production sites are in Chandler, Arizona;
TSMC’s Taiwan-based Fab 2, will continue its offshore in- Rio Rancho, New Mexico and Hillsboro, Or-
cursion with plants in Japan and the U.S. (TSMC)
egon.
Pat Gelsinger is Intel’s new kid on the block
as CEO as of February 2021. His appoint- Offshore, Intel operates fabs in Leixlip, Ire-
ment last year marked Gelsinger’s return land and in Jerusalem and Kiryat Gat, Is-
to the company from his days as Intel’s first rael. In 2020, Intel sold its Dalian, China
chief technical officer. NAND memory and SSD storage fab to S.
Korean chip maker SK hynix for $9 billion.
Industry scuttlebut says Gelsinger, a Stan- to page 8
