In the beginning of next year we have every chance to see a new label on the Intel Pentium 4 processors saying "Made in China", because Intel has finally made up its mind about the best way to use those $302 million from its performance fund. They built a new fab in Shanghai (China), which will be cutting, packing and testing Pentium 4 processors (made of 0.13micron wafers).

As for the wafer production in this country, Intel’s CEO Craig Barrett was very reserved about it saying it was too early to talk about production there. The chemical industry in China is not developed enough yet, as well as the business infrastructure. Anyway, they have already invested around $198 million into this fab, which is about the same as the other similar Intel fabs in Malaysia, Philippines and Costa-Rica required. So, the wafers will be as usual produced in the USA and Ireland.

The new fab is promised to be finished by the end of this year. There will be around 1200 employees, and by 2004 this number should increase up to 3000. We should only say now that it not the only Intel’s fab in Shanghai. There are special production lines manufacturing i845 chipsets and flash memory in this city already (to be more exact in its industrial area aka Waigaoqiao).