Speaking of lots more fresh info:
Hitachi, UMC to form Japan wafer venture
TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Hitachi Ltd and United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) of Taiwan said on Monday they had agreed to set up a joint venture to make 300mm wafers in Japan.
Initial investment at the wafer joint venture will be around 70 billion yen and the business will start production in 2001, they said. Hitachi and UMC said the joint venture will be owned 60 percent by Hitachi and 40 percent by UMC.
They have yet to decide on the capitalisation or name of the joint venture.
The venture, to be located at an existing Hitachi large scale integration (LSI) chip plant in Ibaragi prefecture, north of Tokyo, is scheduled to start mass production in April 2001. Output is expected to reach 7,000 300mm wafers per month in the latter half of 2001. Hitachi and UMC will each take half of the venture's output.
Warning: part of the article may be missing at this point.
Warning: part of the article may be missing at this point.
"Through the joint venture, Hitachi and UMC will meet the growing demand for advanced Integrated Circuits (ICs), including next-generation system-on-chip designs. We expect the joint venture will accelerate the ramping up of production and maximise returns on investment for the new company," Tadashi Ishibashi, president of Hitachi's semiconductor and integrated circuits unit said in a statement.
Asked why the two companies plan to set up the joint venture in Japan rather than in Taiwan where overall production costs are lower, UMC's chief executive officer John Hsuan told a news conference: ``We will benefit from being able to access Hitachi's advanced technology and attract more Japanese customers by being in Japan.'
UMC will also benefit from the fact the new plant will be housed in an existing building put up at Hitachi's expense, an Hitachi official who asked not to identify said. |
