Austins' Tech Industry

[eastsider]

The site selection committee for Samsung has recommended that its new $3.5 billion semiconductor plant be built in Austin. The Samsung board of directors would have to approve it, which could happen later this month or in November.

If the Samsung board picks Austin, it will be a significant victory for the Central Texas economy: the region's biggest economic development prize ever and one of the largest foreign investments in the United States.

The plant will create 900 jobs, most of them paying an average of $60,000 a year, and will generate substantial business for other Austin companies.

It also would secure Austin's future as a major chip-manufacturing site for at least the next decade. It would be the region's first new chip plant since Samsung opened its first operations here in 1998.

The new plant would be built in northeast Austin, next to their current plant which already employs about 1,00 people and is undergoing a $500 million upgrade. Construction of the plant could begin in early 2006 and completed in about 18 months, with chip production starting in late 2007.

Austin beat out the Albany, NY area for the new plant even though it is believed the State of New York offered between $300-$500 million in incentives, more than the $231 million offered by Central Texas.

Austin American-Statesman: Samsung close to choosing Austin for chip plant

Austin Business Journal: Austin is Samsung's top choice for $3.5B chip plant

[eastsider]

Advanced Micro Devices are making plans to build a large corporate campus in Southwest Austin. The $200M project would be built on 59-acres and create 825,000 sf of building space with construction begining in early 2006 and complete by mid 2007. Some groups are against the proposed AMD campus because of the environmental impact it could have considering its location, in the Barton Springs watershed.

Austin Business Journal: AMD submits plans for $200M campus

[eastsider]

Article about the process that the city of Austin took to lure the new Samsung semiconductor plant to the city.

Austin Business Journal: Persistence helped woo Samsung plant

[eastsider]

Freescale Semiconductor has announced that it will not accept a $30M incentive package offered by the city of Austin and Travis County.

The incentive package required Freescale to invest about $400 million in its two Austin chip plants in the next 10 years, add 500 jobs in the region and move its headquarters from the environmentally sensitive Oak Hill area to its design campus in Northwest Austin, which is in a "preferred growth" corridor.

Doke says Freescale still likely will invest $400 million over the next 10 years in Austin, but it might not add 500 employees during that time. It will invest in its campuses in Oak Hill and on Parmer Lane so that corporate executives can work from either location, he says.

Freescale says that the value of the package would have lessend to about $10M. They currently employ 6,500 people in the Austin area.

Austin Business Journal: Freescale says no to incentives

[eastsider]

Advanced Micro Devices are making plans to build a large corporate campus in Southwest Austin. The $200M project would be built on 59-acres and create 825,000 sf of building space with construction begining in early 2006 and complete by mid 2007. Some groups are against the proposed AMD campus because of the environmental impact it could have considering its location, in the Barton Springs watershed.

AMD has reached an agreement the purchase rather than lease the land for its' new campus in southwest Austin. The $21.25 million deal should be completed in the spring with construction starting soon after. AMD also will have a five-year option on three more pieces of land that could hold up to 760,000 sf of additional office space.

Austin American-Statesman: AMD to buy Lantana office site

[eastsider]

Silicon Labs in planning to buy the six-story Computer Sciences Corp. building in downtown Austin located at 400 W. Cesar Chavez St. and make it their new headquarters.

Ivester said a downtown address will be a major selling point for the company, which recruits new hires from all over the country. The company's highly skilled chip designers earn average annual salaries of $90,000.

A growing number of people are headed downtown into high-rise apartment and condominium projects, and a burgeoning shopping and restaurant district is beginning to enliven West Second Street.

The ~100 existing CSC employees in the building will be moved to the other CSC building at 200 W. Cesar Chavez St.

Austin American-Statesman: Silicon Labs plans downtown move.

[eastsider]

AMD unveiled plans for their new campus in southwest Austin that include four 4-story buildings and three parking decks. They plan to spend ~5% of the project cost to achieve the highest national green-building certification for the project.

AMD says it wants to create a first-class campus for its 2,000 Austin white-collar employees and is taking extraordinary measures to protect the environment. They include restoring part of the land to its native state, placing the four office buildings and three garages away from animal habitat areas and employing water-conservation measures such as a million-gallon rainwater collection system.

Environmental groups say these efforts will not be enough because of the location of the project, which is at the edge of the watershed of the Barton Springs-Edwards Aquifer.

Austin American-Statesman: AMD to file plans for ambitious office campus

Austin Chronicle: Back tp the Trenches

[eastsider]

The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin today announced that it will add a powerful new IBM supercomputer, named

[eastsider]

Samsung should be making a decision soon about wether to place a new 300mm chip manufacturing plant in Austin after it's site selection committee recommended the city last fall. Estimates now show that it would be a $5B investment in the plant for Samsung, up from the initial $3.5B estimate, which means that would be the largest single investment by a foreign company in the U.S.

Austin Business Journal: $5B Samsung plant key for region

[eastsider]

The semiconductor industry in the Austin area is continuing it's rebound with more expansions. Qualcomm may be adding 22,500 sf of space to its facilities and could hire up to 70 additional people. Intel is adding 50,000 sf and possibly 60 positions.

The new space will accommodate Intel's new testing lab. While its wafer manufacturing will continue to be done elsewhere, the Austin office now will test chips it designs here. Before, testing was done at a number of Intel sites.

Austin Business Journal: Chip companies hiring again

[eastsider]

Silicon Labs in planning to buy the six-story Computer Sciences Corp. building in downtown Austin located at 400 W. Cesar Chavez St. and make it their new headquarters.

The ~100 existing CSC employees in the building will be moved to the other CSC building at 200 W. Cesar Chavez St.

Silicon Labs has completed a deal that will allow them to move into one of the CSC buildings. They will lease the space for seven years with the option to buy it. Around 400 Silicon Labs employees will move into the downtown building later this year.

Austin Business Journal: Silicon Labs completes downtown deal

[eastsider]

The board of directors at Samsung officially selected Austin as the home to its new $3.5 billion simiconductor plant. The new facility will make DRAM memory chips on 300-millimeter wafers. Construction will begin next week and should be completed by late 2007 with chip production begining in late 2007 or early 2008. The new plant will employ about 900 people.

"This puts a stamp of approval on Austin, Texas, that will be heard around the world," said Gary Farmer, who played a key role recruiting Samsung as chairman of the economic development initiative of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. "The decision has a validating effect for Austin as a center of excellence in the technology arena.

"This is marquee material, to have one of the leading companies in the world say that Austin is a wonderful place to be. We will use that to recruit all sorts of companies here."

Samsung officials said their positive experience with the first Austin factory

[eastsider]

Next week, May 1-5, the city of Austin will be hosting the 2006 World Congress on Information Technology which will bring in 2,100 technology leaders and policy makers from 81 countries around the world. Austin leaders plan to take advantage of the opportunity and try to recruit more high-tech businesses to the city.

The tech doldrums are history, and Austin is riding high. Just two weeks ago, the city won a huge prize: a $3.5 billion Samsung Electronics Co. chip plant.

This week's gathering is a potent opportunity to attract even more economic development.

For the next several days, Austin will have a captive audience of hundreds of CEOs from some of the world's biggest tech companies, including superstars such as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer.

The official agenda is about issues such as the global digital divide, privacy and health care, but Central Texas and state leaders will focus on pitching the region as a great place for companies to grow or relocate.

Austin companies including IBM Corp., Dell, PlanView Inc., Sematech, NetQos Inc., LabNow Inc., and Biophysical Corp. will all be participating in the conference.

Austin American-Statesman: Austin plans to make the most of a world-class tech opportunity

[dimebag1980]

Austin is definitely a city I'm impressed with as far as the tech industry goes. I've never been there so I really have no way of knowing if the city would impress me although I have a feeling it would.

I think it's great to have a city in the south that competes with Silicon Valley... who'd'a thunk it?

[eastsider]

Construction of the new Samsung chip plant (now referred to Austin Fab 2) is now well underway. The shell of the building is scheduled to be completed in June 2007 and prouction of the chips begining late 2007 or early 2008.

Austin American-Statesman: Samsung begins gearing up for new plant