Inmos, for those who need a refresher, was founded in 1978 with great ambitions. Its first products were memories and it captured a significant part of the SRAM market. However, it had been backed by the UK’s National Enterprise Board and was part of the Conservative privatisation initiative in the early 1980s. It ended up being bought by Thorn EMI, which then sold it to STMicroelectronics in the late 1980s.
It was briefly home to Newport Wafer Fab, before a management buyout saw the site becoming home to European Semiconductor Manufacturing. International Rectifier then took over the site in 2002 before itself being acquired by Infineon in 2015.
Now, the site is set to be home again to Newport Wafer Fab, which has been revived. Steve Berry, director of Neptune 6, which has acquired the site, said: “The Newport site, which comes with a skilled workforce of highly reliable and very experienced people, is extremely well placed to contribute to the rapidly emerging international compound semiconductor cluster of South Wales.” Berry, incidentally, was associated with the original Newport Wafer Fab.
And Berry is right in suggesting that it’s all happening in South Wales at the moment. One particular success story which isn’t too far from Newport is IQE, whose share price has boomed on speculation that its technology is integral to the iPhone X.
Right place, right time, right technology?
