Nestled at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains here, the IM Flash plant is a paragon of American high-tech manufacturing.
Robots glide along the ceiling, moving silicon wafers the size of dinner plates between hulking machines that deposit and etch microscopic layers of material to build the most advanced memory chips in the world.
For the 1,700 technicians and scientists who tend to the robots and troubleshoot problems in the delicate manufacturing process, the jobs offer generous pay and benefits and easy access to Utah’s many outdoor attractions.
For Intel and Micron Technology, the two American companies that jointly own and operate IM Flash, the venture allows both of them to sell cutting-edge, three-dimensional memory chips while sharing the multibillion-dollar costs of a modern semiconductor factory.
The memory chips produced at the plant are “probably one of the biggest advances of technology in the last 20 years,” said Jon Carter, who oversees Micron’s strategy for new memory products.
And, as he was quick to point out, all of the work was done in the United States. “Micron has done a really good job of having a good footprint on the home front,” he said.
In many ways, however, the IM Flash plant is an outlier. While companies based in the United States still dominate chip sales worldwide, only about 13 percent of the world’s chip manufacturing capacity was in this country in 2015, down from 30 percent in 1990, according to government data.
hip makers attribute the decline to a variety of forces, including high American tax rates and the hefty subsidies offered by foreign governments for new semiconductor plants, which can cost as much as $10 billion.
“It’s quite a bit more expensive to build a factory in the U.S.,” said Stacy J. Smith, the executive at Intel overseeing manufacturing, operations and sales.
Intel — which predominantly manufactures in Oregon and Arizona but also has factories in Ireland, Israel and China — estimates that the extra cost for an American plant is more than $2 billion.
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