Thursday, February 9 2006 17:30 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: India's first advanced semiconductor fab facility would come up in Hyderabad, with Andhra Pradesh overtaking close contenders Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the race.

"It is Andhra Pradesh which has proved to be the winner," Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dayanidhi Maran told a 'Vision Summit' of the India Semiconductor Association and sources here.

SemIndia, a consortium of overseas Indians, had said in November that it planned to invest USD three billion in the semiconductor manufacturing facility in the country with technology from the US-based Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc but had not announced the location.

Under an agreement signed in December last year, AMD has agreed to transfer the microprocessor technology to SemIndia, Maran said. In the first stage, SemIndia planned to invest USD one billion on setting up the assembly-test-mark-pack (ATMP) facility and then the "fab city', he said.

He said Andhra Pradesh Government had offered 1,200 acres of land for the facility, besides meeting the 'wish list' of SemIndia which included abundant water supply and electricity.

Asked what tilted the decision in favour of Andhra Pradesh, Maran made it clear, "I had no role to play in this", adding the Union Government was only a facilitator.