The fund has budgeted $700 million as a grant to support Kedah Group in the construction of wafer fabrication facilities capable of 8-inch and 12-inch manufacture at up to 30,000 wafer starts per month. The facility would manufacture circuits using 0.18-micron down to 90-nanometer manufacturing processes, according to Kalinin.

The constituent members of the Kedah Group are not clear at this time. Kedah is a Malaysian state which includes Kulim where there is a technology park. The Kulim Hi-tech Park (KHTP) tenants include Silterra, Intel, Infineon, Fuji Electric and AIC Semiconductor.

Silterra is working with research house IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) on a 90-nm CMOS process with plans to scale it down to 65 nm. The 90-nm process is expected to be ready for production in the second half of 2008 and Silterra has said the process would pave the way for alliances between Silterra and other foundries as well as the company's migration to 300-mm manufacturing.

A leading-edge 300-mm wafer fab typical costs in excess of $3 billion to fully facilitize. Even a lagging fab could easily cost in excess of $1 billion. No explanation was given of how the fab would manufacture using both 8-inch wafers and 12-inch diameter wafers, or migrate from one size to the other.