BOISE, Idaho--Reacting to criticism from other memory manufacturers who
say Micron Technology Inc. has played unfairly as DRAM prices have
fallen, a Micron executive said the Boise-based company did what it had to
do to remain financially viable during one of the worst downturns in the
industry's history.
"We have to make money on DRAMs," said Jeff Mailloux, Micron's DRAM
marketing manager. "We don't have any choice. We're not a huge,
diversified company, and that has driven the things we've done in terms of
aggressive shrinks and cost reduction."
Mailloux noted that in February 1996, Micron put its planned fab in Lehi,
Utah, on indefinite hold, a move that decreased the company's potential
wafer starts by 50%. Solely through process shrinks to 0.3 micron and a
conversion of all its capacity to 8-inch wafers from 6-inch wafers, Micron
has been able to double bit output of DRAMs over the past year, Mailloux
said.
Plans to move to 0.25-micron and smaller geometries over the next year
could double bit output again in 1998 without additional fabs, he said.
Mailloux added that other DRAM producers have not reduced production,
but have only limited the size of production increases throughout the DRAM
downturn.
"Where things end up being different from a lot of our competitors is many of
them are still operating older fabs they haven't upgraded,and have not
converted their production to the latest technologies," Mailloux maintained.
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