Intel to upgrade Chandler fab to 300mm wafers

The newspaper said that Chandler will become Intel's fifth 12-inch fab worldwide. Currently, two plants in Oregon and and a line in Albuquerque have already been converted, while its Irish Leixlip plant is due to be finished this year.

The miniature monorail system carries boats full of 25 eight inch wafers right now, but when the upgrade is completed, the railway will have to carry 25 12-inch wafers weighing 20 pounds, as the valuable disks make their way to different processes in the fab.

It will cost Intel a mere $2 billion to create the 12-inch fab. As ex-Intel employee Ron Smith used to say, a billion of anything is a very large number.
What will Intel do with all of this semiconductor capacity? It hopes to sell more chips.