Intel Corp lost four days of production at its largest semiconductor plant – in Albuquerque, New Mexico because a forklift operator working on an expansion of the plant accidentally hit a main power line, leaving 9,000 local residents in the dark and blacking out the plant: full production didn’t begin again until Sunday, some chips in progress were lost, and Intel put the cost of the interruption in the millions of dollars; Intel says the accident is not expected to affect availability of key microprocessors; Intel also expects to meet customer demand for Flash memory chips made in New Mexico, but may have some problems supplying customers for mask programmable microprocessors, because there is no second source for some of these.
