Toshiba to Exit Commodity DRAM Business
Summary for the record, from DRAM Exchange:
Toshiba to Exit Commodity DRAM Business
Toshiba Corp has signed a memorandum of understanding to sell all assets of Dominion Semiconductor, its wholly-owned subsidiary located in Manassas, Virginia, to Micron Technology, Inc. As a result, Toshiba will terminate its business in commodity DRAMs and gradually phase out production at Yokkaichi Operations.
The NAND Flash manufacturing equipment of FlashVision, a joint venture between Toshiba and SanDisk Corp based at Dominion, will be transferred to Yokkaichi Operations, which Toshiba will position as its global memory manufacturing site.
The company will also seek to enhance the cost structure of its memory assembly operations by outsourcing to third parties, including overseas assemblers. In conjunction with this move, the future of DRAM assembly at Yokkaichi Toshiba Electronics will be reconsidered in June 2002, including its potential liquidation.
Following these measures, all of Toshiba's memory operations will be centralized within Yokkaichi Operations by June 2002. However Toshiba will maintain development of the core DRAM technology required for the advanced embedded DRAMs of system LSIs and SoCs. The company will focus on application-specific and high value-added memory products, including NAND Flash, high-density NOR Flash, FCRAMs and customized DRAMs, with Yokkaichi Operation as its global manufacturing site.
(February 2002 Issue, Nikkei Electronics Asia) |
