By Don Miller
At a time when U.S. employers are laying off workers in record numbers, Intel Corp. (INTC) announced yesterday (Tuesday) that it would spend $7 billion over the next two years to build advanced manufacturing facilities while safeguarding 7,000 high-wage jobs.
To support the deployment of Intel’s cutting-edge 32-nanometer (nm) manufacturing technology, Intel President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini said the company will upgrade four existing manufacturing sites in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico to build faster, smaller chips that consume less energy.
The new funding reasents the world’s biggest chipmaker’s largest-ever investment for a new manufacturing process and furthers its efforts to distance itself from its would-be rivals.
“We’re investing in America to keep Intel and our nation at the forefront of innovation,” Otellini said in a speech at the Economic Club in Washington, Bloomberg News reported.
Mr. Otellini’s speech emphasised that Intel was intent on making major investments when most other companies were being forced to scale back.
Boldness is in Intel’s DNA, as the company is known for its strategy of investing during downturns to give it leverage when economies emerge from recession. Since 2002 it has invested $50 billion in capital and research and development in the United States, where it maintains 75% of its production capacity.
Intel’s latest high-performance technology - code-named “Westmere” - will be used in building chip circuitry 32 billionths of a meter across. The tiny, atomic level structures will be 71% smaller than Intel’s current generation of 45 nanometer processors. The chips will also incorporate additional graphics capabilities.
“This is the level of technology where we find the sweet spot for a bunch of new markets we have been aiming ourselves at,” Otellini said in an interview with Forbes.
