manufacturing

China's Suntech to build factories in the U.S.

Update: Suntech Power Holdings, an aggressive, rising star in the solar world, said in a conference call yesterday that it hopes to build plants in the U.S. to help it break into the market here.

"We are currently in discussion with the governors of three different states who have been recruiting us to build factories," said Roger Efird, president of Suntech America, the company's U.S. subsidiary, according to a report on Greentech Media. Efird was speaking on a conference call for the Solar Energy Industries Association. More details will likely emerge on November 15 when … Read more

How clean tech will bring manufacturing jobs back to U.S.

The clean-technology revolution will likely make a lot of people in Silicon Valley rich, but it's also going to help bring back some of the factory jobs that have disappeared.

Why? Weight, for one thing, explains Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, which recently landed $50 million in funding to build factories for its eco-friendly drywall.

Although labor is cheaper in China, shipping costs are going up, primarily because of fossil fuels.

"You could spend $2 to $3 a panel just to ship it (drywall), and that's just to get it to the dock. You'd then … Read more

TSMC to be AMD's new best friend?

While AMD isn't giving away any information on its future fab plans, a major chip foundry is gearing up for a big new customer.

TSMC, the largest chip foundry in the world, is apparently planning to take on a new customer that wants to use the high-k dielectrics and metal gates introduced earlier this year by both Intel and IBM. Sumner Lemon of IDG News Service sat through a TSMC earnings call in which company executives mentioned a mysterious new customer would be coming on board in the second half of 2008.

There are not a lot of folks … Read more

STMicroelectronics now joins the IBM chip alliance

IBM's chip federation has grown again.

Switerland's STMicroelectronics will collaborate with IBM to develop manufacturing processes for the 32-nanometer and 22-nanometer generations of chips. 32-nanometer chips should start coming out in 2009 or 2010. (the number refers to the size of the average feature on the chip. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.)

A whole cavalcade of companies--Advanced Micro Devices, Chartered, Infineon, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Freescale-- already have existing semiconductor alliances with IBM and all of these alliances overlap and leverage each other in various ways. Under the ST-IBM alliance, researchers from each company will be … Read more

Dell revamps manufacturing with Solectron CEO

Dell continues to make wholesale changes to its executive roster.

On Wednesday, the company announced that it has hired Michael Cannon, the chief executive officer of manufacturing powerhouse Solectron, to lead Dell's worldwide manufacturing operations. Cannon will oversee all of Dell's global manufacturing sites, which were previously run by local leaders, a company representative said.

Cannon is the latest hire in an executive shakeup that has seen CEO Kevin Rollins and CFO Jim Schneider--among others--leave Dell after a tumultous year. Last week, online marketing chief John Hamlin became the latest longtime Dell executive to seek other pastures.

Even … Read more

The revolution will be fabbed

Do you enjoy watching Microsoft squirm as it tries to grapple with the open-source software movement? Well, there's a similar opportunity to rattle the cages of entrenched corporate powers, but this time it's the cages of hardware companies.

Bringing the open-source movement's collaborative approach to hardware is the ambition of the Fab@Home project at Cornell University. Project members hope to popularize all-purpose manufacturing devices--variously known as fabbers, 3D printers or rapid prototyping machines--and share the blueprints of the physical objects those machines can produce.

The project offers a free design for a fabber--itself a modifiable … Read more