Intel’s representatives today said that the company plans to shut down the Irish Fab located at Collinstown Industrial Park, Leixlip, County Kildare for two weeks in order to cut costs. The largest semiconductor maker had requested more than 3000 staff to either take leave owed from this year, pull in leave from next year or take voluntary time off without pay for two weeks during Christmas Holiday season. The plant will not function between December 22 and January 5.

Shutting down the manufacturing facility is a widely-used method of cutting the costs in the industry. Intel has already practised such method this year, stopping the Qiryat-Gat, Israel, based Fab 18 between the 13th and 28th of September. Basically, the planned shutdown of the fab is simply another sign of unprecedented hard times for the processor giant from Santa Clara.

According to this page at Intel’s web-site, the Fab in Ireland produces Pentium III and Celeron processors as well as supporting chipsets. The fabrication facilities have a 160 00 square foot class 1 clean room which uses the 0.18-micron process technology. I believe that the information may be slightly outdated and now the facility only makes core-logic products, if it still utilises the 0.18 micron manufacturing technology, of course. Furthermore, they say that the company also plans to upgrade the fab. Maybe some of the equipment will be installed during the mentioned two weeks as well.

Anyway, when the largest supplier of semiconductors begins occasionally to cease manufacturing due to market conditions, it may clearly indicate that the semiconductor business in generally does not prosper at all.