Intel is spending €5bn, or about $5.7bn, upgrading its campus at Leixlip outside Dublin, the company said on Monday. The money is not for a new fab. It is for getting more out of the ones already standing.
The plan is to upgrade existing fabrication facilities, install leading-edge equipment, and extend the automated track system so that separate modules on the site work as one production environment rather than several. Execution began earlier this year.
What comes out the other end is Intel 3 silicon: Xeon 6 processors and the next generation of Xeon after them, the server parts that go into what Intel has taken to calling AI factories.
“The demand for servers, the demand for AI is driving a significant increase in the need for Intel 3 wafers,” Naga Chandrasekaran, the executive vice-president who runs Intel Foundry, told reporters.
The jobs number is more modest than the capital number. Chandrasekaran said the investment would add “several hundred” roles to the 4,900 people Intel already employs in Ireland, alongside specialised construction and equipment-installation trades brought in for the build.
