Apple company for a sum of $ 18.2 million is going to buy a 200-mm plant of Maxim Integrated Products. Factory is for sale since May this year. Before it produced Maxim's analog chips and chips with a mixed signal.
The factory area is about 6.5 thousand sq. M. m. The factory installed 197 pieces of production equipment company Applied Materials, Hitachi, Novellus, Tokyo Electron, KLA and ASML. On the lines of the company can handle 200-mm wafers with technological standards to 90 nm.
It is clear that the volume of this factory for Apple is not low. Anyway, for the manufacture of processors. The company can produce prototypes. For example, prototypes of MEMS sensors and even organize their production. Also, the factory can produce RF MEMS-switch for multi-band networks, including LTE. More on the company can experiment with touch-screen and same sensors.
But maybe everything is much easier? Apple will sell out Used lithography equipment And create on the basis of building a conventional data center.