A recent photograph of progress at Intel's 300-mm wafer fab under construction at Kiryat Gat, Israel.

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The 500-job estimate comes from Eran Harel, managing director of the Harel Hertz Investment House, who specializes in promoting business between Japan and Israel. "Two thirds of the new workers are expected to be from Israel and the rest will come from all over the world," he said.

The companies include Tokyo Electron, Hitachi High Tech Instruments, Hitachi Kokusai Electric, Nikon, DNP, Daifuku and Shinko.

The Japanese companies are set to provide Intel with various products and services, including the sale, installation and maintenance of equipment for clean rooms, steppers and other wet and dry processing equipment. Tokyo Electron, the world's second largest vendor of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, has already been active recruiting field service engineers to joins its team based at Kiryat Gat.

The main field work for the Japanese companies in Kiryat Gat is due to begin in March 2007. Currently, teams from Japanese capital equipment companies are being trained in Fab 32, which Intel is building in Chandler, Arizona. The Kiryat Gat fab is slated to be an exact copy of the 300-mm Arizona fab.

Fab 28 in Kiryat Gat involves an investment of over $3.5 billion by Intel, in addition to a grant of $525 million from the government of Israel. It will work at the 45-nanometer manufacturing node on 300-mm diameter wafers. Production is expected to start in the first half of 2008.

Semiconductor and capital equipment companies from Japan have recently begun increasing their cooperation with Israel, according to Harel. For example, Storewiz Inc., (San Jose, Calif.), a provider of data compression software that can be used in industrial process control, and Tokyo Electron have recently announced a strategic partnership to bring Storewiz products to the Japanese market. Harel-Hertz Investment House assisted Storewiz in linking up with Tokyo Electron.