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.
On 17 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,[14] which Nexperia has vowed to appeal. 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] 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.[15] Nexperia agreed to sell the facility to Vishay Intertechnology for $177million in November 2023.[16] In March 2024, the UK government approved the acquisition of the Newport wafer fab, as announced by Secretary of State Oliver Dowden.[17][18][19]
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.[20] 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.[21]
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.[20] 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.[21]
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.[20][22] Suspended beams span 40m from the central spine with masts along the length of the building allowing for a post-free area,[23][24] and so providing a flexible interior and the possibility of large work areas.[23]Reyner Banham, the architectural critic and writer, said of the Inmos factory that it was "the first really challenging building of the 1980s."[25] Construction began in 1980 and was completed by 1982.[23]
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 N.V. is a multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin. It is headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, on the Euronext Paris in Paris and on 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.
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. It is majority owned by foreign investors, and the central government of Taiwan is the largest shareholder. In 2023, the company was ranked 44th in the Forbes Global 2000.
Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside, was a British-Italian architect noted for his modernist and constructivist designs in high-tech architecture. He was a senior partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, previously known as the Richard Rogers Partnership, until June 2020.
Intel Ireland is the Irish subsidiary of the U.S.-based semiconductor giant, Intel. Founded in 1989, the company is one of the largest employers in Ireland.
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.
Nexperia is a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. It is a subsidiary of the partially state-owned Chinese company Wingtech Technology. 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.
RSHP is a British architectural firm, founded in 1977 and previously known as the Richard Rogers Partnership which became Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007. The firm rebranded from Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to simply RSHP on 30 June 2022, after the retirement and death of Richard Rogers. Its main offices are located in the Leadenhall Building, London, completed to the firm's designs in 2014. Previously they were at the Thames Wharf Studios. In its various incarnations it has designed many important buildings including the Lloyd's building and the Millennium Dome in London and the Senedd building in Cardiff.
Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) manufactures and sells semiconductor products, in particular memory chips and other integrated circuits. As of 2020, the company was the 7th largest semiconductor foundry in the world with three 12 inch and two 8 inch wafer labs. The company offers foundry services as well as design, manufacturing and test services. It was formerly known as Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. and changed its name in June 2010. Powerchip Technology Corporation was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
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. (GF) 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.
Anthony James Hunt, familiarly known as Tony Hunt, was a British structural engineer of numerous world-renowned buildings, with a career spanning from the 1950s until his retirement in 2002. As a leading proponent of British High Tech architecture and with a strong interest in both engineering and industrial design, Hunt was a major player in creating the High Tech movement of Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. He formed Anthony Hunt Associates in 1962. He worked with Rogers and Foster on Reliance Controls building in Swindon (1966) which was the first building of the British High Tech architecture, or more generally the High Tech architecture style. He was also a structural engineer on the Waterloo International railway station in London (1993).
Semiconductor consolidation is the trend of semiconductor companies collaborating in order to come to a practical synergy with the goal of being able to operate in a business model that can sustain profitability.
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 2020–2023 global chip shortage was a worldwide chip shortage affecting more than 169 industries. The crisis led to major price increases, long queues, and reselling among consumers and manufacturers for automobiles, graphics cards, video game consoles, computers, household appliances, and other consumer electronics that require integrated circuits.
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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.
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