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A state-of-the-art test, assembly and packaging (TAP) facility for the high-profile AIM Photonics project will be located at imaging sensor maker ON Semi’s existing site in Rochester, New York. New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced the choice at a meeting of the AIM Photonics board of officers, during which the AIM Photonics CEO Michael Liehr made a request for $81 million to support the project’s 2017-2018 draft spending plan.

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, ON Semiconductor makes a huge range of chips - including a wealth of CCD and CMOS image sensors that are employed in applications ranging from machine vision and factory automation to high-specification space imaging.

Acquired via ON Semi’s $92 million buyout of Truesense Imaging in 2014, the 260,000 square foot Rochester site features a 6-inch wafer fab for making CCD sensors, combined with CCD and CMOS test and assembly capability across a 20,000 square foot cleanroom.

The same location hosts a design center that was originally - perhaps ironically - part of Eastman Kodak’s physics laboratories, before it was spun off with the creation of Truesense in 2011, after Eastman Kodak itself filed for bankruptcy.

ON Semi’s COO Bill Schromm said that the company’s Rochester operations at the Eastman Business Park facility incorporated design, wafer fabrication, assembly, packaging, and testing of imaging components.