"Citing weak demand, NEC says it will shutter Scotland fab"
siliconstrategies.com
NEC Corp. Tuesday said it will shut down its fab in Livingston, Scotland, and lay off the remaining 1,280 workers by April 2002, due to the depressed global semiconductor market.
Earlier this year, NEC announced that it was halting DRAM production at the Scotland fab, switching to system-on-a-chip and custom LSI devices. Capacity was slated to be cut nearly in half to 15,000 wafers a month.
However, officials now say that poor market demand for mobile phones and related telecommunications chips has forced them to close the fab completely. The fab could be reopened sometime in the future, if market conditions improve, NEC said.
As part of its semiconductor cutback, NEC also plans to shut a pilot line for advanced LSI devices at a plant in Sagamihara, Japan,and part of a wafer line at another fab in Kyushu.
Earlier this year, NEC closed its back-end test and assembly operations at a fab in Roseville, Calif., and scaled back production. NEC is also shifting production in Roseville from DRAM to SoC and custom LSI devices, which for the time being continue in production there.
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