Home to Intel, Rio Rancho Becomes High Tech Hub
Published Mar 27, 2008
Intel’s presence in Rio Rancho has drawn more than 50 new companies to the area.
From the air, the vastness of Intel’s manufacturing plant in Rio Rancho is most visible. It stretches more than a mile long and a half-mile wide. Dominating Rio Rancho for nearly 30 years, the Intel facility is among the most famous facilities of its type on the globe – a symbol of the digital revolution itself.
But the view from above doesn’t even begin to offer a glimpse of the changes that have overtaken the vast industry of so-called integrated device manufacturers on the ground.
Intel’s workforce, 5,600 in Rio Rancho alone in 2007, has shrunk as the crosswinds of these forces continue to buffet the entire industry, with overseas labor and undercutting technologies squeezing margins.
Yet Intel’s presence here means that Rio Rancho remains one of the nation’s leading high-tech cities. Intel is the sun around which many satellites now revolve – about 50 technology companies and startups in Rio Rancho alone, and others have established operations in surrounding areas. SUMCO (formerly Sumitomo Mitsubishi Silicon) makes silicon wafers in Albuquerque. San Jose, Calif.-based Xilinx, the world’s biggest “fabless” maker of field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, is here as well. Sparton, an electronic parts maker, has an 110,000-square-foot facility; Bi Ra Systems, a maker of bipolar power supply modules, among many other products, has planted a stake in Rio Rancho, too.
Area business leader and president of Albuquerque Economic Development, Gary Tonjes, cites many factors for the region’s draw to microelectronics manufacturers, including lower labor and energy costs, numerous state and local incentives, lower land costs and land availability, and proximity to a major airport. Double Eagle II – Albuquerque’s secondary airport after Albuquerque International Sunport – is about ten miles to the southwest.
In addition, Intel is a large customer of these companies, making proximity important as well.
Tonjes offered this outlook for the region: “Intel’s presence for 300mm [wafers] is fairly well assured for the next five to eight years, or until the next generation of size is introduced. Then, probably, there’s a 50-50 chance it will remain in the United States or move to Asia. [It’ll] be a cost decision,” although he adds that what will be “critical” to its remaining in Rio Rancho “will be highly trained semi-equipment techs and engineers, [because] the need for relatively unskilled labor will continue to decline.”
And Tonjes does see several growth areas ahead.
He says the region should, in fact, be “targeting” fabless design houses (like Xilinx), but “solar panels – photovoltaics – use a process somewhat similar to semiconductors as does MEMS [Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems], and these two industries should see significant growth over the next five to 10 years. PV and MEMS have not reached the point of ‘cookie-cutter’ machines capable of making a ‘standard’ product. Therefore the requirement for engineering, technicians and operators should continue at a fairly high growth rate for the next five years or so.”
In other words, the future’s as bright at the vast New Mexico sky overhead.
Story by Verne Gay
Photo by Ian Curcio
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