Manufacturing and Assembly and Test
As of December 31, 2011, 78% of our wafer fabrication, including microprocessors and chipsets, was conducted within the U.S. at our facilities in Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Massachusetts. The remaining 22% of our wafer fabrication was conducted outside the U.S. at our facilities in Ireland, China, and Israel.
As of December 31, 2011, we primarily manufactured our products in wafer fabrication facilities at the following locations:
|Products||Wafer Size||Process Technology||Locations|
|Microprocessors||300mm||22nm||Oregon, Arizona, Israel|
|Microprocessors and chipsets||300mm||32nm||New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon|
|Chipsets||300mm||65nm||Ireland, Arizona, China|
|Chipsets, microprocessors, and other products||300mm||90nm||Ireland|
As of December 31, 2011, a substantial majority of our microprocessors were manufactured on 300-millimeter (mm) wafers using our 32nm process technology. In the second half of 2011, we began manufacturing microprocessors using our 22nm process technology. As we move to each succeeding generation of manufacturing process technology, we incur significant start-up costs to prepare each factory for manufacturing. However, continuing to advance our process technology provides benefits that we believe justify these costs. The benefits of moving to each succeeding generation of manufacturing process technology can include using less space per transistor, reducing heat output from each transistor, and increasing the number of integrated features on each chip. These advancements can result in microprocessors that are higher performing, consume less power, and cost less to manufacture. In addition, with each shift to a new process technology, we are able to produce more microprocessors per square foot of our wafer fabrication facilities. The costs to develop our process technology are significantly less than adding capacity by building additional wafer fabrication facilities using older process technology.
We use third-party manufacturing companies (foundries) to manufacture wafers for certain components, including networking and communications products. In addition, we primarily use subcontractors to manufacture board-level products and systems, and purchase certain communications networking products and mobile phone components from external vendors primarily in the Asia-Pacific region.
Following the manufacturing process, the majority of our components are subject to assembly and test. We perform our components assembly and test at facilities in Malaysia, China, Costa Rica, and Vietnam. To augment capacity, we use subcontractors to perform assembly of certain products, primarily chipsets and networking and communications products. In addition, we use subcontractors to perform assembly and test of our mobile phone components.
Our NAND flash memory products are manufactured by IMFT and IMFS using 20nm, 25nm, 34nm, or 50nm process technology, and assembly and test of these products is performed by Micron Technology, Inc. and other external subcontractors. For further information, see "Note 11: Equity Method and Cost Method Investments" in Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K.
Our employment practices are consistent with, and we expect our suppliers and subcontractors to abide by, local country law. In addition, we impose a minimum employee age requirement as well as progressive Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) requirements, regardless of local law.
We have thousands of suppliers, including subcontractors, providing our various materials and service needs. We set expectations for supplier performance and reinforce those expectations with periodic assessments. We communicate those expectations to our suppliers regularly and work with them to implement improvements when necessary. We seek, where possible, to have several sources of supply for all of these materials and resources, but we may rely on a single or limited number of suppliers, or upon suppliers in a single country. In those cases, we develop and implement plans and actions to reduce the exposure that would result from a disruption in supply. We have entered into long-term contracts with certain suppliers to ensure a portion of our silicon supply.
Our products are typically produced at multiple Intel facilities at various sites around the world, or by subcontractors that have multiple facilities. However, some products are produced in only one Intel or subcontractor facility, and we seek to implement action plans to reduce the exposure that would result from a disruption at any such facility. See "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of this Form 10-K.