Intel Corp. has reached a deal with northeast China's port city Dalian Tuesday to establish a college for the study of semiconductors, the first large-scale training base sponsored by the US computer chip giant.

 

The college, requiring an investment of 348-million-yuan (US$44.6 million) will be part of the Dalian University of Technology. The college is expected to become China's top training center for professionals involved in integrated circuitry and is expected to open in August 2008, said Dalian's Mayor Xia Deren at the project's signing ceremony.

 

Intel will donate an eight-inch chip assembly line to the college and help train teachers and develop the curriculum, said Wee Theng Tan, president of Intel China.

 

In a congratulatory letter, China's Ministry of Education praised Intel's contribution as "exemplary" and will enhance cooperation between schools and businesses and technological innovation, he said.

 

The school, covering 10,000 square meters, will be located in a high-tech zone north of Dalian's city proper, close to Intel's first full factory in Asia, a US$2.5 billion plant that is to produce 300-millimetre integrated wafers using 90-nanometer technology after it becomes operational in the first half of 2010.

 

The new project will make Intel "one of the largest foreign investors in China" and raise its total investment in the country to nearly US$4 billion, said Paul Otellini, Intel's president and chief executive officer, who announced the project on Monday in Beijing.

 

The city government estimates the new plant will provide about 1,700 jobs at the plant and the economic spin offs it creates in training, logistics and other services, will be worth 120 billion yuan (US$15.4 billion).

 

Intel already has assembly and test operations in the eastern municipality of Shanghai and Chengdu in the southwest.

 

(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2007)