TI åbner ny 'state-of-the-art' analog produktionslinie

Texas Instruments opfører verdens første 12" waferfab, der er dedikeret til fremstilling af analoge komponenter (in english).

Texas Instruments (TI) has announced the opening of its new manufacturing facility in Richardson, Texas.  The company expects to begin moving equipment into the facility in October. Known as RFAB,(\'R\' for Richardson, \'FAB\' for fabrication), the fab will be the world’s only production facility to use 300-millimeter (12-inch) silicon wafers to manufacture analog chips. 

The facility will give TI a strategic advantage in high-volume production because thousands of analog chips can be etched onto each of these wafers, more than double the number on the more commonly used and smaller 200-millimeter wafers. 

- The time is right for this investment. Customer demand for analog chips is growing, and there’s tremendous desire to save energy and protect the environment. The chips produced here will help our customers make thousands of electronic products that are more energy-efficient. It is significant that these devices will be made here, in North Texas, in one of the industry’s most environmentally responsible fabs, says Rich Templeton, TI’s chairman, president and CEO.

The facility will produce analog integrated circuits based on TI’s proprietary process.  Customers will use these chips in electronics ranging from smartphones and netbooks, to telecom and computing systems.

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony with local and state officials, Templeton said TI plans to ship the first chips from this facility by the end of 2010.  When the first phase of equipment is ramped and producing at full capacity, the facility will be capable of shipping more than $1 billion worth of analog chips per year. 

Local education has benefitted from TI’s decision to build the fab in Richardson.  As part of the original agreement between community and state partners, the nearby University of Texas at Dallas will receive a total of $300 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund, the Texas General Land Office, the UT System, and private donors for improvement of its engineering and research programs. 

RFAB has been an important model of green construction.  It was the first semiconductor facility to achieve Gold certification with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.  TI has applied knowledge from the RFAB designs to other facilities all over the world.

The opening of RFAB is the most recent in a series of manufacturing expansions by TI. Earlier this year, TI opened Clark, an assembly and test facility in the Philippines. TI also has been installing new test equipment at several other locations, and is in the process of installing newly acquired 200-mm manufacturing equipment for analog chip production at sites around the world, including Dallas.