Hewlett-Packard Co has chosen Singapore for its new chip plant, and will join with the state-owned Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd to invest upwards of $1bn in the silicon wafer processing plant. The facility will have manufacturing capacity of over 30,000 8 wafers a month, initially to 0.35 micron design rules, with the possibility that it will move to to 0.25 micron rules or smaller. Construction will begin in September and be completed by 1999 with production to start in mid-1999. The plant will be built and run by a joint venture, Chartered Silicon Partners, majority-owned by Chartered Semiconductor, itself part of state-owned conglomerate Singapore Technologies group, with HP and the Singapore’s Economic Development Board government agency holding minority stakes. The plant is the tenth wafer fab either in operation or under construction in Singapore. The new one will make application-specific integrated circuits and will serve customers on a worldwide basis. HP plans to treat the new plant as if it were one of its own internal fabrication plants, using it for parts for its server, workstation printer and calculator businesses.
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