Crolles is a commune

Communes of France

The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...

 in the Isère

Isère

Isère is a department in the Rhône-Alpes region in the east of France named after the river Isère.- History :Isère is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Dauphiné...

 department in south-eastern France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. It is located in the Isère valley, 20 km north-east of Grenoble

Grenoble

Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...

, upstream on the Isère River

Isère River

The Isère is a 286 km long river in southeastern France, in the Rhône-Alpes région. Its source is in the Alps on the border with Italy, near the ski resort Val d'Isère. It flows into the Rhône River in Pont-de-l'Isère, a few km north of Valence...

. It has given its name to the Dent de Crolles

Dent de Crolles

The Dent de Crolles is a karstic mountain of the Chartreuse Mountains range, 17 km north east from Grenoble, Isère . It has a characteristic "tooth-like" profile which is well-known sight of the Isère Valley seen from the Grenoble area...

 mountain (2,062 m) which stands just above the city.

Industries

Crolles is known to host the biggest semiconducting fab of France (4,000 people, for a total investment of 3 billions euros). First founded by STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics is an Italian-French electronics and semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.While STMicroelectronics corporate headquarters and the headquarters for EMEA region are based in Geneva, the holding company, STMicroelectronics N.V. is registered in Amsterdam,...

 in the 1980s, the recent development (Crolles 2, 2003) results from a joint-venture with Philips

Philips

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

 (today NXP semiconductors) and Motorola

Motorola

Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

.

Crolles is also the birthplace of Petzl

Petzl

Petzl is a world leading manufacturer of climbing gear, caving gear, work-at-height equipment, and headlamps based in Crolles , France. The company was created by the cave explorer Fernand Petzl in the mid-1970s...

, the leading company of safety equipment for mountaineering

Mountaineering

Mountaineering or mountain climbing is the sport, hobby or profession of hiking, skiing, and climbing mountains. While mountaineering began as attempts to reach the highest point of unclimbed mountains it has branched into specialisations that address different aspects of the mountain and consists...

, caving

Caving

Caving—also occasionally known as spelunking in the United States and potholing in the United Kingdom—is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems...

and vertical safety in civil engineering, which still has its headquarters there.