Chip capacity is 'full up' say memory firms
David Manners
Computer memory capacity may have to come down because the memory makers have no new factories coming on-stream - except for one.
At Infineon Technologies , Hans Pieter Bette, vice-president for memories, said: "We are 100 per cent full. We will do what we can, but to increase capacity quickly is impossible. We are not changing our initial plans." Infineon is relying on shrinks to increase output rather than new factory building. It is implementing a 'hefty' shrink from 0.22 to 0.19µm at its White Oak fab in the US.
At Hyundai/LG, Andrew Norwood said: "We have no extra capacity to bring on-line. The issues are: What effect will it have on the PC industry? And: Will we see PCs shipping with less memory?"
Agreeing, Helmut Schock, Toshiba's European memory boss, said: "If synchronous pricing goes much higher it will start to affect the number of megabytes used per PC. We will not increase production in big quantities because we're already running at high capacity." Toshiba had been running Rambus wafers, squeezing synchronous DRAM production, but now these are unsellable following Intel's Camino hitch.
Samsung is suffering similarly. "Like a lot of memory makers we were making Rambus DRAM but all that output now has to be stocked because we can't sell it", says Ken Jones, vice-president for marketing at Samsung, "Synchronous DRAM will be really tight in Q4 but what happens in Q1?" Samsung is building another fab but it won't produce product until the Spring.
Micron Technology is also full, but says it has the capacity to add another 20,000 wafers at its fabs in Avezzano, Italy and Miho, Japan - but, again, not until next Spring.
The one exception is NEC which opened a brand new fab in Shanghai in February. It is currently running 5,000 wafers per month, but this will be upped to 10,000 wafers per month from November 1999. |
