Intel opens chip plant in China

BEIJING - The US computer chip maker Intel Corp. has started operation of its first chip plant in Asia in China’s Liaoning province, a media report said Wednesday.

The $2.5-billion plant is located in the high-tech Jinzhou New District, north of the port city of Dalian. It covers an area of 163,000 sq. meters, China Daily reported.

With over 1,700 employees, 88 percent of whom are locals, it will initially produce chipsets for laptop computers, high-performance desktop PCs and powerful servers.

“This is the first fab we’ve built at a brand new site since 1992,” Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive officer, said at the commencement ceremony Tuesday.

The plant has been dubbed “Fab 68″, as the numbers six and eight are auspicious in Chinese culture.

“Over time, I believe that Fab 68 will be a prime example of how investment in innovation fuels economic prosperity, and not only in Dalian but in China as a whole,” he said.

The factory will be Intel’s eighth producing 300-millimeter integrated wafers.

It will use 65-nanometer technology, an advanced method of computer chip-making that measures its work in 65 billionths of a meter.

The technology is more advanced than the 90-nanometer technology that Intel had pledged when it initially announced the project.

Construction of the plant began in September 2007.

“The project will bring positive and obvious effect to the industrial restructuring and development of high-tech industries in Dalian,” said Xia Deren, mayor of Dalian.