Industry News
Intel To Build New 300 mm Wafer Factory In Arizona
Representatives of Intel Corporation announced plans to build a new 300-mm wafer fabrication facility at its site in Chandler, Ariz. The new factory, designated Fab 32, will begin production of leading-edge microprocessors in the second half of 2007 on 45 nanometer process technology. Construction on the US$3 billion project is set to begin immediately.
When completed, Fab 32 will become Intel's sixth 300-mm wafer facility. The structure will be about 1 million square feet with 184,000 square feet of clean room space. The project will create up to 1000 new Intel jobs at the Arizona site over the next several years. During the construction phase, more than 3,000 skilled trades people will be hired to work on the project.
Intel currently operates four 300-mm fabs that provide the equivalent manufacturing capacity of about eight 200-mm factories. Those factories are located in Oregon, Ireland and New Mexico. The company also has an additional 300 mm fab currently under construction in Arizona (Fab 12) scheduled to begin operations later this year, and one expansion in Ireland (Fab 24-2) scheduled to begin operations in the first quarter of next year.
Manufacturing with 300-mm wafers (about 12 inches in diameter) dramatically increases the ability to produce semiconductors at a lower cost compared with more widely used 200-mm (eight-inch) wafers. The total silicon surface area of a 300-mm wafer is 225 percent, or more than twice that of a 200-mm wafer, and the number of printed die (individual computer chips) is increased to 240 percent. The bigger wafers lower the production cost per chip while diminishing overall use of resources. Three-hundred-mm wafer manufacturing will use 40 percent less energy and water per chip than a 200-mm wafer factory.
Separately, Intel said it will invest $105 million dollars to convert an existing inactive wafer fab in New Mexico to a component temporary test facility. The project will provide additional test capacity to the company's factory network for the next two years and will result in an additional 300 jobs at the New Mexico site during that period.
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Alcatel Awarded $250 Million Contract for the Dubai Metro Project
Alcatel has been awarded a contract valued at approximately US$250 million by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) to supply, integrate and deploy its driverless train control and telecommunication systems for the Dubai Metro in the United Arab Emirates.
The new metro, executed in two phases, will initially consist of two lines: the Red Line and the Green Line. The Red Line is scheduled to go into service in 2009, with a 16,000 people per hour per direction capacity. The Green Line, scheduled to go into service by 2015 will have a 7,400 people per hour per direction capacity. When completed, at a total of over 70 km, this will become the longest driverless metro in the world.
The Dubai Municipality will benefit from low operating and maintenance costs, optimal life cycle costs and proven driverless technology inherent with Alcatel's SelTrac® technology. Alcatel's SelTrac communications-based train control system has been operational in underground systems in cities such as New-York, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Ankara, Kuala Lumpur, and others, for over 20 years.
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Raytheon Company Awarded $124.1 Million Standard Missile-3 Contract
Raytheon Company has been awarded a US$124.1 million contract from the U.S. Navy to build, test and deliver additional Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) rounds to the Missile Defense Agency to meet the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense deployment requirements. This is the first manufacturing contract for the upgraded SM-3 Block IA. Raytheon has already delivered six SM-3 Block I missiles and is on contract to deliver five more. The SM-3 Block IA provides an incremental upgrade to improve missile reliability and supportability at a reduced cost. SM-3 also recently transitioned from engineering development to manufacturing build process and is being built along with production SM-2s in Raytheon Missile Systems' factories in Tucson, Ariz., and Camden, Ark. The SM-3 Kinetic Warhead will be built and tested at a state-of-the-art kill vehicle manufacturing facility in Tucson which enables the company to incorporate the best of spacecraft quality and high-rate missile manufacturing expertise. Raytheon is responsible for the development and integration of the SM-3 "all up round," including the SM-3 kinetic warhead, and leads an integrated team that includes The Boeing Company, Aerojet and Alliant Techsystems. Work on SM-3 also is done in Anaheim, Calif., and Elkton, Md.
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U.S. Army Awards General Dynamics $23 Million in Combat Vehicle-Related Contracts
The U.S. Army TACOM Lifecycle Management Command has awarded General Dynamics Land Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, two contracts valued at US$23 million for work related to the Stryker combat vehicle and the Abrams tank system. Vehicle support, resets and upgrades are a continuing portion of General Dynamics combat systems-related business.
General Dynamics Land Systems was awarded a $17.4 million contract modification for logistics support for Stryker Brigade Combat Teams. Contractor logistics support includes ordering spare parts, managing a spare parts warehouse, worldwide distribution of repair parts and completing maintenance services on Stryker wheeled combat vehicles at U.S. Army garrisons and overseas bases. Work will be performed by existing General Dynamics employees in Sterling Heights, Mich.; Auburn, Wash.; and London, Ontario; and is expected to be complete by Dec. 31, 2005.
General Dynamics Land Systems was also awarded a $5.5 million modification to an existing contract for Abrams tank systems technical support (STS). STS funds engineering studies and investigations on Abrams tanks with the purpose of identifying improvements and changing obsolete parts, while keeping Abrams tanks current to their base configuration. The STS program’s objective is to maintain Abrams tanks at high operational readiness rates. Work will be performed in Kuwait by existing General Dynamics employees and is expected to be complete by July 31, 2006. This modification is part of a contract initially awarded in November 2001 and brings the cumulative value to $685 million.
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IBM Completes Acquisition of Isogon Corporation
Representatives of IBM announced the completion of the company’s acquisition of Isogon Corporation approximately one month after reaching an agreement to purchase the privately held company based in New York, New York.
Isogon is a leading provider in software asset management solutions for the mainframe. Isogon technology enables customers to align software spending with business priorities by automatically tracking inventory and measuring usage of software running on mainframe computers. Isogon technology will play a key role in IBM's IT service management strategy, which is focused on automating and integrating IT processes throughout an enterprise.
Isogon technologies will be integrated into the IBM Tivoli service management software business immediately, and products incorporating Isogon technologies will soon be available from IBM and from IBM Business Partners.
With this acquisition, IBM will offer a comprehensive software asset management solution that can enable companies to gain a single, cross-platform view of software inventory, usage and licenses for their operating systems, middleware and packaged applications -- all through a simple common interface.
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Cisco Systems to Acquire Sheer Networks
Representatives of Cisco Systems, Inc., announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Sheer Networks of San Jose, Calif. Sheer Networks is a pioneer in the development of intelligent network and service management products for service providers and large enterprises. Sheer's technology can adapt to network changes easily, scale to large networks, and help extend new technologies and services to simplify the difficult task of monitoring and maintaining complex networks.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately US$97 million in cash and assumed options for Sheer Networks. In addition, the acquisition price may be increased by as much as $25 million depending on the degree to which certain development and product milestones are met after close. The acquisition of Sheer is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2006.
Sheer's virtual network model hides the complexity of physical networks in a way that makes them accessible to a variety of management applications. This Dynamic Network Abstraction layer makes them transparent and accessible to a broad range of management applications. Building on the Sheer Networks technology and platform, Cisco will develop and sell device, network and service-level management applications enabling intelligent management across multi-vendor networks and network-based services. Cisco will also enable other hardware and software vendors to develop and deliver applications that can easily interoperate with Cisco applications through standards-based APIs. These same APIs enable easy integration into service provider OSS/BSS environments.
Upon close of the acquisition, the Sheer Networks team will report into the Network Management Technology Group headed by Cliff Meltzer, senior vice president. Sheer Networks was founded in 1999 and has 100 employees in San Jose, Calif. and Petach Tikva, Israel.
