After three years of construction, computer chip-maker GlobalFoundries’ new $4.6-billion plant in Malta, N.Y. is nearing completion. Construction of the interior is currently under way, with full plant start up set for year-end.
The 1.2-million-sq-ft “Fab 8” will be one of the most technologically advanced fabs worldwide, with capacity to process about 60,000, 32/28 nm wafers a month, the company says. It will serve 160 companies including IBM, which worked with GlobalFoundries last December on an initial production of advanced chips at the site.
“The project is currently transitioning into the operations phase,” says a spokesperson for GlobalFoundries, one of the world’s largest foundries by revenue.
The project includes a four-story facility with up to 300,000 sq ft of clean room space for chip production and a 221,000-sq-ft office building. The project is aiming for LEED Gold certification.
Fab 8 is located on the 1,414-acre site of the Luther Forest Technology Campus, an economic development corporation tech park designed for industries including semiconductor and nanotechnology manufacturing. GlobalFoundries is LFTC’s anchor tenant and occupies more than 222 acres of the campus. Fab 8 is the first of three state-of-the-art fabs proposed for the campus.
M+W U.S., Plano, Texas, designed the facility and is the lead contractor under a $650-million, design-and-build turnkey contract, and Turner Construction, New York, is the construction manager. Bay Crane of Long Island City, N.Y., performed the steel and concrete erection as well as lift planning, supervision, and execution. The steelwork and concrete erection work was completed in October 2010.
GlobalFoundries is a founding member of the Joint Development Alliance located at East Fishkill in New York’s “Tech Valley,” a 19-county region of eastern New York from just south of Montreal to just north of New York City. The alliance includes several major tech firms such as IBM, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, Samsung Electronics, and Toshiba, all of which are located near Fab 8. With this alliance, GlobalFoundries says it is “driving the global standard for new technologies.”
