Huey,
Most fab investments include risk sharing by partners and
the inclusion of partners who will utilize the facility.
Active participants are usually better "investors" than
financial institutions who generally play more passive roles.
The Tower Semi arrangement is one such example.
Given the short time frame for production that Vanguard announced there
may be ready fab space available, however I read that a $2.0 billion
dollar investment is required, perhaps to outfit with the latest 300mm
equipment. Foundry partners usually share in the capital expenditures.
If SST does not make an investment in the fab then it seems likely that
they will purchase product from Vanguard. As Eli Harari said last
year (when asked about the FlashVision JV and wafer being made available
from Toshiba in advance of the completion of the Dominion fab)...
"Well, I can't think of anyone who is giving away flash."
I found these in a recent press release...
"The major benefits for Vanguard are licensing the technology, sharing risks, as well as landing guaranteed orders," said Alfred Yin, head of research at BNP Paribas Peregrine Securities in Hong Kong.
The planned fab will manufacture flash and other memory chips at Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Hsieh said, adding that further details won't be available until later this year.
There's a reason Vanguard is targeting flash memory. Surging demand for digital cameras and MP3 players has sparked the need for NAND, a high-density type of flash, analysts said. NOR, another kind of flash, is mainly used in cell phones and PCs.
"Everybody wants to get into the flash-memory market," said Carol Yu, a semiconductor analyst at Grand Cathay Securities Co. in Taipei.
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