Legit Reviews Visits Intel FAB 24-2 in Ireland

Taking The Tour of Intel’s Leixlip Operations

Intel Ireland includes two facilities located in Leixlip and Shannon. Intel currently employees 5,125 people at their Ireland locations and has been in operation there since 1990. Legit Reviews recently had the oppurtunity to go on a private tour inside one of the FABs over in Leixlip and we would like share that expierence with our readers. Leixlip, located in County Kildare, is a tranquil community of approximately 15,000 people located 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) northwest of Dublin, Ireland’s capital. The Leixlip FABs are Intel?s largest and most advanced manufacturing facilities outside of the United States.

Leixlip consists of a number of manufacturing facilities, FAB?s 10/14 & FAB?s 24 & 24-2. FAB 10& FAB 14 are known as Ireland FAB operations (IFO). They operate on a 0.25, 0.18, 0.13, 0.090 and 0.065 micron production process. Between these two FABS Intel can produce 65 individual, different products. The IFO covers approximately 130,000sq meters. It is also the only source of the P854 & P856 chips used in many routers etc. It should also be pointed out that Intel Ireland has an excellent environmental management track record. Its Environmental Management System is accredited to the ISO 14001 quality standard and as such is the first Intel plant to do so. If you look at the above picture of the plant you can tell that it is located in a rural area, so being environmentally friendly is important!

FAB 24 is one of the leading FABS to run 300mm technology on a 90nm process. 300mm wafers allow for high output at lower cost. FAB 24 is 52,000sq meters, which includes a 15,000sq meter clean room. It was opened in June 2004 and originally produced the Pentium 4 line of chips. FAB 24-2 is Intel?s new baby. It was only opened this summer back in June of 2006. I say it?s Intel?s baby, because it produces chips on the 65nm level. This is currently the smallest manufacturing process used for CPU?s and its home to the new Core 2 Duo chips, aka ?Conroe?.

My adventure started early in the morning, I had to catch a local train out to Leixlip and then take a long walk to reach Intel. The first thing I noticed when I arrived was the security. Not long after I arrived I was greeted by our contact in the main reception and after a quick security check I was allowed to pass through a metal detector. I should mention that no cameras were allowed inside the FAB?s (I said security was tight), so the pictures you?ll see were taken for us by Intel.