Information Technology

Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI) is planning to construct its next major semiconductor manufacturing plant in Richardson, Texas. TI will invest approximately $3 billion in the 300mm silicon wafer plant in the years following groundbreaking in late 2005. The plant will employ up to 1,000 people when fully operational. The siting of the plant in Texas will provide over $300-million in new funding from private and public sources for the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas.  

Internet software maker Neoteris is relocating its headquarters from Mountain View to Sunnyvale, Calif. The new 44,702-sf facility triples Neoteris’ office space and expands available lab space for research and product development.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. will open a new chip design center in Hyderabad, India by year-end 2003. Cypress, based in Silicon Valley, currently operates 18 design centers worldwide. The new facility will complement Cypress’ current Indian design center in Bangalore. 

NCI Information Systems has contracted Chantilly, Va.-based Dietze Construction Group to perform the buildout of its new 75,500-sf office in Reston, Va. The project was designed by The M Group in Vienna, Va. 

Unisys, a worldwide IT services and solutions company, will occupy 280,000 sf of office space at Plaza America III. Located adjacent to Reston Town Center, the facility is part of the 1.2 million-sf Plaza America mixed-use development. The lease is part of Unisys’ 420,000-sf, $250-million expansion as it consolidates its federal government and global public sector divisions.

Roswell, N.M.-based Strategic Data Systems is developing a facility capable of hosting 1 million gigabytes of data in in two former Atlas F nuclear missile silos. Comprising 1.2 million sf, the 22-floor facility will have 100 servers on each floor. The massive computer storage system will be protected by a structure built to withstand most natural and manmade disasters, and features four-foot-thick concrete walls, 4,000-pound steel doors, and a diesel-powered backup generator. The silos will employ sixty workers once operational.

FASL LLC, a company merging the flash memory operations of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Fujitsu, is planning to build a chipmaking plant in Sunnyvale, Calif. AMD's Fab 25 plant in Austin, which manufactures only flash memory chips, will also become part of FASL.  

Hynix Semiconductor Manufacturing America is initiating a $100-million upgrade of its Eugene, Ore., wafer fabrication facility. Hynix has already invested over $1.6-billion in the facility, which will remain in operation throughout the project. Increasing production by over fifty percent, the upgrade will enable Hynix to manufacture new products for high-end applications in the United States server market. Hynix Semiconductor Manufacturing America is the U.S. subsidiary of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of Korea.   

Chip maker Actel Corp. is planning to move its corporate headquarters from Sunnyvale to Mountain View in fall 2003. Increasing square footage by over 20,000-sf, the 160,000-sf lease with Equity Office Properties will provide space to hire an additional 80 employees.

Austin-based Client Outsource Corp. will open a 125-seat call center in Bombay. The center will serve information technology and hardware companies in Austin and Silicon Valley that need a minimum of 25 call center seats.

Onramp Access, an Austin-based Internet service provider, relocated its headquarters on March 1, 2003 from 9,000 sf of office and 2,000 sf of data center space in downtown Austin to a leased facility in East Austin with 12,000 sf of office space and a data center totalling 9,000 sf. 

Intel Corp. will invest $2 billion to convert its Chandler, Ariz., manufacturing plant to the production of 300-millimeter silicon wafers. The conversion project is slated to begin in 2004 and reach completion in 2005. The plant will be Intel's fifth 300mm plant. Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., employs 9,000 workers in Arizona.  

Federal IT and security contractor NCI Information Systems has relocated its corporate headquarters from Tysons Corner to Reston, Va. The company leased 76,716 sf of office space at Plaza America, a 1.2 million-sf development that is nearly 50% leased by government-related tenants. NCI relocated to accommodate growth and increase customer and employee convenience.

Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard is planning to create a $25-million digital ink factory in the southern city of Kiryat Gat in Israel. Indigo NV, an Israel-based digital printing systems manufacturer, was recently acquired by Hewlett Packard.

Mykrolis, formerly Millipore Microelectronics Inc., is relocating its headquarters to 180,000 sf in Billerica. The semiconductor equipment company will finish moving its 250 Massachusetts employees into the building by March 2003. Mykrolis, now an independent entity, is relocating from the Bedford office of its former parent company, Millipore Corp. Mykrolis' new facility was previously a local campus of Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel Networks Ltd.