Fujitsu to triple flash-IC production at Oregon fab
Electronic Buyers' News
(05/04/00, 10:30:51 AM EDT)
GRESHAM, Ore. -- Fujitsu Ltd. today said it will triple flash-memory production at its fab here in an effort to meet demand coming from the mobile communications market.
The company and its subsidiary, Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. of San Jose, will spend $550 million in the next two years and hire an additional 300 employees in the next three years, according to Takashi Yabu, general manager of FMI's Gresham Manufacturing Division. The move would raise total employment at the plant to about 800 by 2002.
The Gresham fab started operation in 1988 as a DRAM production plant, and in the next 10 years was doubled in size to 545,000 sq. ft. As a result of the DRAM market's downturn, Fujitsu began to de-emphasize its role in the DRAM sector by shifting from PC main memory to flash memory and higher-speed products like the company's Fast Cycle RAM.
Now, Fujitsu will triple its original 10,000-wafer-per-month projections for flash-IC production at the fab to 30,000 wafers a month to meet demand for cellular phones, handheld wireless devices, and other mobile products, according to Kazunari Shirai, group president of Fujitsu's Electronic Devices Group in Japan.
The fab production expansion will be conducted under a wafer-foundry arrangement with Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Ltd. (FASL), a joint-venture company created in 1993 between Fujitsu and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif.
"Gresham will be one of Fujitsu's major flash-memory facilities and one of the most significant such facilities in the United States," said Shirai. "Along with our FASL factories in Japan, we expect that Gresham will play an important role in Fujitsu's worldwide flash-memory operation." |
