Beats me - Spansion is not making money while moving to 300mm.
Numonyx Israeli fab preps for 45-nm process
Amir Ben-Artzi
EE Times Europe
(04/01/2008 3:49 AM EDT)
NETANYA, Israel — An Intel Corp. 200-mm wafer fab in Israel, now assigned to Numonyx for the production of NOR flash memory, is in the process of moving its manufacturing to 45-nm, a step it plans to complete in the fourth quarter of 2008.
In an exclusive interview with EETimes Europe, Yonathan Wand Numonyx general manager for Israel, said that plant is expected to reach full output during 2009 at a level of 8,000 8 inch wafers a week. Currently, the plant produces between 5,000 and 6,000 wafers a week. The Israeli plant is on course to be the first NOR flash fab to produce in 45nm.
The facility, renamed Fab 1, is located in Kiryat Gat in Southern Israel and currently produces in 65-nm process technology. Numonyx Israel employs 1,300 workers, all of them former employees of Intel, in addition to 1,000 contract workers. Israel is expected to be employ about 15 percent of the Numonyx workforce.
"We produce the whole range of NOR flash memories, from 32-Mbyte to 1-Gbyte, both in MLC and in single bit," Wand said. The plant, formerly Intel's Fab 18, started making microprocessors in 1999 on a 180-nm process. Since then about $2.2 billion has been invested in the facility. This year, Wand estimates, the investment will be between $50 million and $100 million.
Wand, who had managed Intel's fab in Jerusalem, which was closed Monday (March 31), is also vice president of Numonyx Manufacturing. Fab 1 will be managed by Jenny Cohen Derfler, who had managed manufacturing in Fab 18. Wand claims that Numonyx holds 35 percent of the worldwide NOR flash market, followed by Spansion and Samsung. |
