Project Architects: David Bartlett Pierre Botschi Mike Davies Sally Eaton Michael Elkan Marco Goldschmied Kunimi Hayashi Tim Inskip Julia Marks Peter McMunn Richard Rogers John Young
Financial Times Architecture at Work Award Commendation 1983
Constructa-Preis for Overall Excellence in the Field of Architecture 1986
The Inmos microprocessor factory, also known as the Inmos factory, previously known as Newport Wafer Fab,[2] now known as Nexperia Newport,[3] is a semiconductor fabrication plant for Inmos built in Newport, Wales, UK in 1980. It has gone through numerous changes in ownership. Since March 2024, the factory has been owned by Vishay Intertechnology.
In January 2015 it was acquired by Infineon Technologies, under its subsidiary company IR Newport Ltd.[9]
In September 2017, Infineon sold the site to Neptune 6 Limited, under its subsidiary company of Newport Wafer Fab Limited.[10][9]
In July 2021 the site was sold to Chinese-owned Dutch-headquartered Nexperia, who also have plants in Hamburg and Manchester.[11][12]Kwasi Kwarteng, then Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, deemed the sale insignificant to national security at the time of the acquisition.[13] Based on a report by Datenna, CNBC reported on 7 July that about 30% of the shares of Nexperia's parent company Wingtech could be traced back to the Chinese government,[14] which, according to Datenna, led to high-level Chinese government influence in 2021.[15]
On 8 July 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that a security review would be launched, overriding Kwarteng's initial assessment.[16][17] He appointed National Security AdviserStephen Lovegrove as head of the review process.[18] Newport Water Fab only heard about the review through media reports.[19] In December 2021, Lovegrove assured that the sale was under review but would not go into details.[18] In April 2022, the investigation was completed and had come to the same conclusion as the previous Deputy National Security Advisor, that the plant was not a national security issue because the technology used was 20 years old and China already had it.[12]
In May 2022, a new Datenna investigation found that the overall percentage of shares traced to Chinese government entities declined to about 20 percent, resulting in a medium risk of government influence.[15]
In May 2022, another investigation was launched under the National Security and Investment Act.[20][21] The investigation was supposed to take 30 days[22][23] but ended up taking almost 6 months.[24] On 16 November 2022, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the British government ordered Nexperia to divest 86% of its ownership interest in Nexperia Newport Limited (NNL, formerly Newport Wafer Fab) for national security reasons,[25] which Nexperia has vowed to appeal.[26][27] Nexperia's UK manager said they rescued an investment-starved company from collapse, [...] repaid taxpayer loans, secured jobs, wages, bonuses and pensions, and agreed to spend more than £80 million on equipment upgrades since early 2021".[2] The company said the decision was "legally wrong and disproportionate" in light of changes it had made to address the government's concerns, including a promise not to produce more sophisticated compound semiconductors.[28]
In December 2022, it was announced Nexperia had engaged New York law firm, Akin Gump to act on their behalf in their application for a judicial review of the UK government’s decision.[29] Nexperia agreed to sell the facility to Vishay Intertechnology for $177 million in November 2023.[30] Nexperia sold 100% of Nexperia Newport Limited, which owned and operated the Newport facility, to Vishay.[31][32] In March 2024, the UK government approved the acquisition of the Newport wafer fab, as announced by Secretary of State Oliver Dowden.[33][34][35] With the acquisition by Vishay, the 580 Newport employees retained their positions.[36]
History of design and construction
The former Inmos microprocessor factory in 2007 when it was owned by International Rectifier
Inmos Limited commissioned the Richard Rogers Partnership, now known as Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, to design its UK microprocessor manufacturing facility at Newport. The design criterion was for a fast construction, so that it was ready for operation within one year of starting.[37] Richard Rogers until then was known for designing the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Lloyd's building in London. The main contractor for the construction of the building was Laing Construction, the structural engineers were Anthony Hunt Associates, the services engineers were YRM Engineers and the quantity surveyors were GA Hanscomb Partnership.[38]
The technical requirements were that it would house controlled conditions for the production of electronic microchips, a service area for various offices and a staff canteen, all under one roof.[37] The Inmos factory was designed to be a model factory that could be constructed in a variety of locations. The speed of the design process and construction time of the building were critical. The 8,900 square metres (96,000sqft) single-storey building was designed to be fabricated off-site, and assembled on the Newport site.[38]
The building is divided into clean and "dirty" areas. The cleanroom being for microchip production and the dirty area for all others services in the building. The building has a central spine which is 7.2 metres (24ft) wide and 106m (348ft) from which all the services and production area emanates from eight bays with the potential to increase this to 20 bays.[37][39] Suspended beams span 40m from the central spine with masts along the length of the building allowing for a post-free area,[40][41] and so providing a flexible interior and the possibility of large work areas.[40]Reyner Banham, the architectural critic and writer, said of the Inmos factory that it was "the first really challenging building of the 1980s."[42] Construction began in 1980 and was completed by 1982.[40]
Atmel Corporation was a creator and manufacturer of semiconductors before being subsumed by Microchip Technology in 2016. Atmel was founded in 1984. The company focused on embedded systems built around microcontrollers. Its products included microcontrollers radio-frequency (RF) devices including Wi-Fi, EEPROM, and flash memory devices, symmetric and asymmetric security chips, touch sensors and controllers, and application-specific products. Atmel supplies its devices as standard products, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), or application-specific standard product (ASSPs) depending on the requirements of its customers.
STMicroelectronics NV is a multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin. Incorporated in the Netherlands, its headquarters are in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland and it is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the Euronext Paris and the Borsa Italiana in Milan. ST is the largest European semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. The company resulted from the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies in 1987: Thomson Semiconducteurs of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy.
Renesas Electronics Corporation is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, initially incorporated in 2002 as Renesas Technology, the consolidated entity of the semiconductor units of Hitachi and Mitsubishi excluding their dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) businesses, to which NEC Electronics merged in 2010, resulting in a minor change in the corporate name and logo to as it is now.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's second-most valuable semiconductor company, the world's largest dedicated independent ("pure-play") semiconductor foundry, and its country's largest company, with headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Although the central government of Taiwan is the largest individual shareholder, the majority of TSMC is owned by foreign investors. In 2023, the company was ranked 44th in the Forbes Global 2000.
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Its consumer products, including the Ballistix line of memory modules, are marketed under the Crucial brand. Micron and Intel together created IM Flash Technologies, which produced NAND flash memory. It owned Lexar between 2006 and 2017.
Inmos International plc and two operating subsidiaries, Inmos Limited (UK) and Inmos Corporation (US), was a British semiconductor company founded by Iann Barron, Richard Petritz, and Paul Schroeder in July 1978. Inmos Limited’s head office and design office were at Aztec West business park in Bristol, England.
Maxim Integrated, a subsidiary of Analog Devices, designs, manufactures, and sells analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for the automotive, industrial, communications, consumer, and computing markets. Maxim's product portfolio includes power and battery management ICs, sensors, analog ICs, interface ICs, communications solutions, digital ICs, embedded security, and microcontrollers. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has design centers, manufacturing facilities, and sales offices worldwide.
Winbond Electronics Corporation is a Taiwan-based corporation founded in 1987. It produces semiconductors and several types of integrated circuits (ICs) including dynamic random-access memory, static random-access memory, serial flash, microcontrollers, and Super I/O chips.
Microchip Technology Incorporated is a publicly listed American corporation that manufactures microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog, and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers, Serial EEPROM devices, Serial SRAM devices, embedded security devices, radio frequency (RF) devices, thermal, power, and battery management analog devices, as well as linear, interface and wireless products.
Nexperia is a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. It is a subsidiary of the partially state-owned Chinese company Wingtech Technology, a publicly traded company. It has front-end factories in Hamburg, Germany, and Greater Manchester, England. It is the former Standard Products business unit of NXP Semiconductors. The company's product range includes bipolar transistors, diodes, ESD protection, TVS diodes, MOSFETs, and logic devices.
Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. is an American manufacturer of discrete semiconductors and passive electronic components founded by Polish-born businessman Felix Zandman. Vishay has manufacturing plants in Israel, Asia, Europe, and the Americas where it produces rectifiers, diodes, MOSFETs, optoelectronics, selected integrated circuits, resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Vishay Intertechnology revenues for 2023 were $3.4 billion. At the end of 2023, Vishay had approximately 23,500 full-time employees.
GlobalFoundries Inc. is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, the company was privately owned by Mubadala Investment Company, a sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, until an initial public offering (IPO) in October 2021.
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. is an Israeli company that manufactures integrated circuits using specialty process technologies, including SiGe, BiCMOS, Silicon Photonics, SOI, mixed-signal and RFCMOS, CMOS image sensors, non-imaging sensors, power management (BCD), and non-volatile memory (NVM) as well as MEMS capabilities. Tower Semiconductor also owns 51% of TPSCo, an enterprise with Nuvoton Technology Corporation Japan (NTCJ).
The Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was a ministerial department of the United Kingdom Government, from July 2016 to February 2023.
ChangXin Memory Technologies is a Chinese semiconductor integrated device manufacturer headquartered in Hefei, Anhui, specializing in the production of DRAM memory.
The semiconductor industry, including Integrated Circuit (IC) manufacturing, design, and packaging, forms a major part of Taiwan's IT industry. Due to its strong capabilities in OEM wafer manufacturing and a complete industry supply chain, Taiwan has been able to distinguish itself as a leading microchip manufacturer and dominate the global marketplace. Taiwan’s semiconductor sector accounted for US$115 billion, around 20 percent of the global semiconductor industry. In sectors such as foundry operations, Taiwanese companies account for 50 percent of the world market, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) the biggest player in the foundry market.
Wingtech Technology is a partially state-owned semiconductor and communications product integration company based in Jiaxing and listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company was founded in 2006 by a former STMicroelectronics engineer. Wingtech's main business includes semiconductor chip design, wafer manufacturing, optical imaging and communication product integration.
The CHIPS and Science Act is a U.S. federal statute enacted by the 117th United States Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on August 9, 2022. The act authorizes roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States, for which it appropriates $52.7 billion. The act includes $39 billion in subsidies for chip manufacturing on U.S. soil along with 25% investment tax credits for costs of manufacturing equipment, and $13 billion for semiconductor research and workforce training, with the dual aim of strengthening American supply chain resilience and countering China. It also invests $174 billion in the overall ecosystem of public sector research in science and technology, advancing human spaceflight, quantum computing, materials science, biotechnology, experimental physics, research security, social and ethical considerations, workforce development and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at NASA, NSF, DOE, EDA, and NIST.
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