Apple Buys More Land in San Jose with Former Chip Fab

Apple has purchased yet more land in San Jose, adding a building that was last used as a small chip fab. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Apple paid some US$18.2 million for a 70,000 square foot building at 3725 N. First St. in north San Jose.

Apple plays Monopoly

Nathan Donato-Weinstein reported that the space was last used by Maxim Integrated Products, a semiconductor firm that also sold the property to Apple. The significance there is that the building has clean room facilities, though it's far too small to significantly contribute to Apple's voracious chip needs.

Marketing materials for the site described the space as, "Well suited for prototype, pilot, and low-volume manufacturing, this facility is capable of producing a wide array of products at multiple technology nodes ranging from 600nm to 90nm, with the bulk of production from 350nm to 180nm."

Those materials also said that the property, "offers a complete tool line consisting of 197 well-maintained front-end tools from such OEMs as AMAT, Hitachi, Novellus, LAM, TEL, KLA, and ASML."

Apple is a company making significant investments in R&D, so it's anyone's guess what Apple plans to really do with this space, but nothing about that description would let Apple begin manufacturing its CPUs in this small space.

The company has been snapping up land all over the South Bay, including significant purchases and leases in San Jose, Cupertino, and Sunnyvale. There's more in the SVBJ story.