Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturers have to upgrade fabs (to .25 to .28 micron) to remain competitive........................
japanbiztech.com
DRAM Makers to Change Strategies
for Production
October 29, 1997 (TAIPEI) -- With the unit price of 16Mb
DRAMs falling near the US$4 benchmark, Taiwan
manufacturers are moving to stem profit losses by upgrading production
technology, increasing output or reducing production costs.
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp., for example, is now
making DRAMs using 0.37 and 0.33 micro meter technology. It is also
test producing DRAMs with 0.30 micro meter technology, so it can
manufacture more than 700 units of 16Mb DRAMs out of a single 8-in.
wafer.
Vanguard said it soon will upgrade its technology to 0.25 micro meters,
which is close to that of Micron Technology Inc., a U.S. chip maker
that has managed to make a profit on standard DRAMs.
Loss-laden TI-Acer Inc. has seen its balance sheets in the red in 1997.
Company executives attributed the losses to the high production costs
that have eaten away at its revenues.
For this reason, the company decided that in 1998 it will stop making
DRAMs out of 6-in. wafers and upgrade its production technology
from 0.35 micro meters to 0.28 micro meters.
Mosel Vitelic Inc. said it will stop producing all types of standard
DRAMs that are not profitable, including 4Mb, 8Mb and 16Mb
products. These production lines will be converted to make 256Kb x
16, 256Kb x 32, 512Kb x 16 and 512Kb x 32 products.
Promos Technologies, a reinvestment of Mosel Vitelic, plans to begin
producing 64Mb standard DRAMs in 1998.
Taiwan Memory Technology Inc. and Silicon Integrated Solution
(Taiwan) Inc. plan to decrease production of DRAM chips and
increase output of products that have larger profit margins. Fast
SRAM, SRAM, logic ICs and flash memories are their choices for
output expansion.
(Commercial Times, Taiwan) |
