X-FAB Brings First CMOS Fab To Brazil

The Brazilian government and X-FAB Silicon Foundries have signed an agreement to bring semiconductor manufacturing to Brazil. Brazil's government-backed Excellence Center for Advanced Electronic Technology (CEITEC) will license XC06 — X-FAB’s 0.6 micrometer process technology — to establish the first commercial CMOS semiconductor manufacturing plant in Brazil. The agreement gives X-FAB access to the emerging Latin American electronics market. CEITEC’s fab in Porto Alegre, Brazil will host small-volume manufacturing and prototyping, while X-Fab will manufacture larger volumes in its Erfurt, Germany and Lubbock, Texas facilities. CEITEC is part of a Brazilian-government-sponsored effort to develop a domestic microelectronics industry. The seven chip design centers it has established will now have access to Brazil’s first semiconductor front-end wafer fab. CEITEC’s fab is expected to open in the third quarter of 2008.