LSI designs high-performance semiconductors that access, interconnect and store data, voice and video. The company wants to sell its fabrication plant here as part of its transition to newer technology and a "fabless" operating model, which means it will no longer fabricate any of its own product. It announced plans to sell the facility in September.
The plant, which opened in 1998, is LSI's only US semiconductor manufacturing facility. Much of the company's manufacturing is already being done overseas through existing foundry partners (UMC, SMIC and ROHM Co Ltd.) in Taiwan, Japan, China and Malaysia.
An LSI source told GlobeSt.com last month that the company would continue to operate the Gresham facility in the near term with hope it can find a buyer that will continue to operate the facility so it can be a customer. While LSI still needs the type of product produced at the Gresham Plant – .18 micron wafers – the source says enough of its customers are demanding itpursue 65-nanometer process technology that it will no longer be profitable to operate the facility. The plant could still be profitable for a third-party manufacturer with multiple customers in need of the .18-micron wafers, which still comprise approximately 20% of all specialty chips and 34% of all integrated circuits, according to the source.
Colliers Advanced Technology Real Estate Group has the disposition assignment. As a fully operational facility with a highly-skilled workforce, Stephen Rothrock, senior vice president and managing director of Colliers ATREG, says the property represents "a rare opportunity" for a semiconductor company seeking additional capacity "to gain significant time-to-market and cost advantages."
The last time Gresham had a semiconductor manufacturer walk away from a plant was 2001, when Fujitsu closed its 196-acre, 825,000-sf plant. The next year, however, Chandler, Ariz.-based Microchip Technology agreed to acquire the facility for $185.3 million and reopen it.
LSI's plant cost $1 billion to create, with about $300 million spent on construction. Rothrock, who sold the Fujitsu plant to Microchip, told GlobeSt.com last month that the only semiconductor manufacturing facilities that have sold are operational ones.
LSI's plant is a SMIF ballroom design-based manufacturing facility and equipment set is currently in commercial production with products at the 130nm, 180nm and above technology nodes, and includes copper technology. The 80-acre site provides separate, secure and self-contained power and water.
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