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Originally Posted by phrontist
Ha! How much does that stuff cost?
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The one we have here in Kokomo costs in the billions. I am not sure what the total cost would be for a IC fab plant, but we just re-tooled ours within the last 5 years and it was a $300-400 million dollar project.
Putting in a large-scale IC fab operation is somewhat on the same scale as building a modern power plant, and those cost well over 1 billion.
This year, we hit a milestone by making about 20 "perfect wafers" (5") in our fab here at Delphi. In the IC fab world, a "perfect wafer" with zero defects is a pretty big deal. We have been making 5" wafers for a long time (older technology), but recently have been making 8" wafers for the past couple of years.
The air filtration system in these types of places runs a single digit ppm, and has 10x the flow of air that a domed stadium has. Cool stuff.
(sorry to get off topic, but this IC fab stuff intrigues me)
Andy B.