Brazil Opens Semiconductor Fab Facility

BELO HORIZONTE, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Sept. 12 -- Brazilian authorities have announced plans to establish a semiconductor industry in the state of Minas Gerais, where it is dedicating 4 million square meters (approximately 990 acres) to semiconductor and semiconductor-related manufacturing and design.

The Minas Gerais Technological Park will be occupied by Companhia Brasileira de semiconductores (CBS), which is planning an analog- and mixed-signal semiconductor wafer fabrication facility, or fab, that will run high-voltage CMOS, bipolar, BiCMOS and other specialized processes. The target completion date for the first CBS fab is early 2007.

In addition to semiconductor manufacturing, the Brazilian government is sponsoring the creation of a cluster of semiconductor design houses that will feed Brazilian and other worldwide wafer fabs. Brazil's Eldorado project aims to attract foreign semiconductor design companies to Brazil and to create indigenous design companies.

Brazil is one of the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries that are now approaching about half the economic size of G6 countries (The US, Japan, the UK, Germany, France and Italy).

Wolfgang Sauer, the CEO and cofounder of CBS and former president of Volkswagen Brazil, Robert Bosch Brazi and Autolatina, and a special advisor on industrialization to various South American governments, said, "Brazil is already a major maker and exporter of advanced high-technology products such as aircraft, consumer electronics and cell phones and is making the necessary infrastructure and industrial investment to step onto the world stage in semiconductor manufacturing and design. A Brazilian semiconductor industry offers a real alternative to the concentration of semiconductor manufacturing in Asia."

For more information, visit: www.cbs-semi.com