Intel to throw quarter of $ billion into Malaysia

THE EE TIMES reckons Intel is set to upgrade its Malaysian test and assembly facility in Malaysia and will spend $230 million doing so. It won't be in Ireland because that is not Malaysia, last time we looked.

The magazine quotes Intel chairman Doctor Craig Barrett as saying the extra investment will create another 3,000 jobs.

Intel's already plunged nearly $4.2 billion into Malaysia since it first started stuff there.

Perhaps Craig B should look at the BSA's report on Malaysia. If people didn't pirate software there, and it has a 61 per cent piracy rate, an extra quarter of a million employees could be hired by 2009.

The country, according to the CIA World Fact Book, has a population of 24,000,000. Problems there include air pollution, water pollution, deforestation, and smoke from Indonesian forest fires. We are unaware how heavily the constitutional monarchy penalises people who smoke cigarettes at press time.

But what is for sure is you cannot smoke in Eire, although we understand the internal combustion engine is rapidly destroying the Irish environment too, prompted by spark plugs - which are not the same as cigarette lighters.

The unemployment rate is only three per cent. Between BSA and Intel, Malaysia could cure that clearly inconsiderable problem rather easily. µ

L'INQ
EE Times