Intel Corporation

In 1980, Intel chose the corner of Sara Road and N.M. 528 in Rio Rancho as the site for its newest computer-chip manufacturing facility.  Since then, Intel has become the world's largest maker of computer chips with 35,000 employees worldwide and more than 4,000 in Rio Rancho. The plant's most recent expansion created more than 2,500 direct jobs and 3,500 construction jobs — and the company is embarking on a major, ten-year further upgrade at the site.

The advanced components manufactured at this site include the following:

• Microprocessors

These are the central control units, or "brains," that direct data
processing in personal computers.

• Microcontrollers

These chips are programmed to perform specific functions in
products and technologies that abound in everyday life, such as
VCRs, automobile engines, traffic signals and electric motors.

• Flash memory devices

These components store programs for notebook PCs and
hand-held computers even when the power is off.

Intel's Rio Rancho site includes three manufacturing plants, known as "Fabs" (for fabrication facility).  Fab 7 produces microcontrollers and flash memory used in aircraft, automobiles, telecommunications and laptop computers. Fab 9 makes chips for computers, including the noted Pentium microprocessor. Fab 11, Intel's newest plant, makes Pentiums and also will make future generations of Intel chips.  The site also includes large office buildings and utility and support buildings.

Because a single speck of dusk can destroy the tiny chips when they are being made, Intel makes them in "clean rooms" which are thousands of times cleaner than a surgical operating room.  The air around us typically contains about 25,000 particles per cubic foot.  The air in a Class I clean room have no more than one particle per cubic foot of air — and the particle is no larger than two-tenths of a micron. (A micron is about one-one hundredth the thickness of a human hair.)

Intel and its employees also are active in community issues.  The company has provided funding for the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program for minority technical students, a $70,000 modular building for a "youth-at-risk" program, $100,000 for an exhibit at the Albuquerque Children's Museum, equipment for Albuquerque's Technical-Vocational Institute, numerous Pentium-based computers to high schools, and scholarships to technical institutes such as the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute.

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