You might think that after snapping up both McAfee and Infineon for almost $10 billion combined, Intel's coffers would be running a little low. That's clearly not the case, though, as the chip-giant has just committed to investing between $6 billion and $8 billion in upgrading its existing fabs, as well as to building a brand new development facility.
A large portion of the money will go towards upgrading four existing facilities in Arizona and Oregon. The investment will allow Intel to lead the way in manufacturing chips using a 22nm process, which will be instrumental in processor and memory architectures over the next few years. The company's 'Ivy Bridge' processors - the 22nm die-shrink of the still unreleased Sandy Bridge CPUs - are expected to enter production at some point in the second half of 2011.
The remainder of the money will go towards building and equipping a state-of-the-art development fab in Oregon that will be used to pioneer new manufacturing technologies and techniques.
Intel estimates that the projects - which will be spread out over the next few years - will create up to 8,000 construction jobs and as many as 1,000 permanent high-tech jobs.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini was more than happy to explain that, "today's announcement reflects the next tranche of the continued advancement of Moore's Law and a further commitment to invest in the future of Intel and America".
Of course, this is the least that Intel will have to do make sure it stays competitive, especially in the memory market. As Bloomberg points out, Samsung - the world's largest manufacturer of memory - is also spending heavily on new manufacturing facilities and equipment.
