DRAM Production Up 61 Pct., But Tight Supplies Will Continue
August 23, 2000 (TOKYO) -- A serious shortage of DRAMs will continue until the end of 2001, according to a survey conducted by Nikkei Market Access.
The production of DRAMs will amount to 235 peta-bits (peta is the fifteenth power of 10) in 2000, up 61 percent from the previous year, and 340 peta-bits in 2001, up 45 percent from the previous year.
A primary reason for the slow growth of DRAM production is deterrents to investment in production lines. There are only three new DRAM lines to be started in 2000, by Nan Ya Technology Corp. of Taiwan in the first quarter, and by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., Ltd. of Korea in the latter half of this year.
More than 10 production lines will go on line from 2000 to 2001 in Japan, but not all of them are intended for DRAMs.
Existing lines had been increasing production through downsizing the chip size. In 1996, when 16Mb DRAMs were the main products, Micron Technology Inc. of the United States made inroads into the markets with downsized chips, intensifying the shrink-size competition.
Recently, however, the race for shrink-size products has been scaled down. Looking at the pace at which downsizing occurs, more DRAM manufacturers could have run a production line for a 0.18 micron design rule, but as of now, such lines are in operation only at Micron and Hitachi Ltd. With the shrink-size slowdown today, lines based on a 0.15-micron rule are expected to be dominant only after 2002.
Related stories:
Nan Ya Tech to Upgrade DRAM Processing Skills in 2001
DRAM Microchip Makers Expect High Q4 Profits
(Tamao Kikuchi, Nikkei Market Access) |
