A team of Irish designers at Xilinx's R&D facility in Dublin has completed work on chip designs that will be manufactured on 300 millimetre silicon wafers.

The designs will be among the first in the world to be manufactured on this type of wafer, which is the most advanced in the semiconductor industry.

The Irish designs will go into full production at a manufacturing facility in Hitachinaka, Japan, early next month.

By using larger wafers in the manufacturing process (the previous standard was 200 millimetre), firms can improve efficiency by between 125 and 150 per cent.

The Irish-developed silicon designs for Xilinx's 300 millimetre wafer process were developed by a team under the management of senior IC developer at Xilinx, Mr Paul Hyland.

He said the larger wafers would enable Xilinx to build bigger chips capable of a much greater computing power and smaller chips at a much more cost-effective rate.

Over the past few years, Xilinx has begun to manufacture chips that power a range of consumer products, such as digital cameras and personal digital assistants.

Mr Paul McCambridge, managing director of Xilinx Ireland, said the new designs for the 300 millimeter wafers would position the firm well for an upturn in the semiconductor industry.

Intel, which recently delayed plans to build its own 300 millimeter wafer fabrication facility in Leixlip, is expected to decide by the end of the year when it will resume building work on the plant.