According to TI (Dallas), the Richardson facility will be the first analog chip fab to use 300-mm wafers. When the first phase of equipment is ramped and producing at full capacity, the facility will be capable of shipping more than $1 billion worth of analog chips per year, according to the company.

The Richardson fab, known as RFAB, has been on TI's drawing board for some time. According to the company's website, TI originally broke ground on the 1.1-million-square-foot facility in 2004.

By 2007, the shell of RFAB was complete but the company said it would not immediately equip the facility. At the time, Kevin Ritchie, senior vice president of TI's Technology and Manufacturing Group, told EE Times that the fab would not be in production until 2009 or 2010.

Last week, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved the purchase by TI of $172.5 million worth of chip production equipment from Qimonda AG's fab in Sandston, Va. A TI spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that TI plans to move this equipment from Virginia to Richardson to equip RFAB.

TI said it would immediately begin filling 250 jobs at the Richardson facility.

Earlier this year, TI opened a test and assembly facility in the Philippines. The company said it has also been installing new test equipment at several other locations, and is in the process of installing newly acquired 200-mm manufacturing equipment for analog chip production at sites around the world, including Dallas.

RFAB was the first semiconductor facility to achieve Gold certification with the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, TI said.

"The time is right for this investment," said Rich Templeton, TI's chairman, president and CEO, in a statement. "Customer demand for analog chips is growing, and there's tremendous desire to save energy and protect the environment."

TI said local education would benefit from the facility opening. As part of the original agreement between community and state partners, the nearby University of Texas at Dallas will receive a total of $300 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund, the Texas General Land Office, the UT System and private donors for improvement of its engineering and research programs, TI said.