By contrast, labor costs are a greater consideration in testing and assembly facilities, which are more low-tech. As a result, Intel has located most of these in developing nations such as Costa Rica, Malaysia and China, among others.
Testing and assembly facilities also cost less than fabs, which can cost $3 billion to build.
Indian officials had lobbied Intel to build a fab in India. The country is also trying to woo more hardware manufacturers to build in India, putting the nation in competition with China and Taiwan.
No major manufacturer has a fab in the country, although a Korean entrepreneur has laid plans to create a foundry in Hyderabad, according to sources. To help build India's chip-manufacturing industry, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay has created course curriculum around semiconductor design that it currently is trying to port to other universities, according to Sunil Sherlekar, the head of the embedded-systems group at Tata Consultancy Services."
