Hitachi, UMC End 300mm Joint Venture
Online staff -- Electronic News, 2/19/2002
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Hitachi Ltd. and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) today announced they have discontinued their 300mm joint venture, Trecenti Technologies Inc., located in Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki prefecture, Japan.
Hitachi will acquire the 40 percent of Trecenti stock owned by Taiwanese foundry UMC, making Trecenti a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of April, the companies said.
Trecenti was formed in March 2000 and started its manufacturing operations a year later. It was the first company with a 300mm wafer plant in mass production, according to the companies.
While Trecenti has realized quick turn-around times by using single wafer processing, in light of the downturn, Hitachi and UMC have decided to focus their resources on their own 300mm efforts. UMC said it plans to concentrate on its Fab 12A in Taiwan and UMCi subsidiary in Singapore, while Hitachi will focus on Trecenti. The company’s UMC employees will return to UMC, while those transferred or dispatched from Hitachi will remain at Trecenti.
"Hitachi will use Trecenti, which will be our most advanced fab, along with Hitachi Nippon Steel Semiconductor Singapore Pte. Ltd. and the N2 line in Naka, in order to manufacture System LSIs, flash memories and SRAMs," said Satoru Ito, Hitachi’s president and CEO of semiconductors and ICs, in a statement. "Although UMC and Hitachi will terminate the joint venture agreement regarding Trecenti, we will keep our good relationship." |
