Toshiba to triple advanced memory
By Reuters
January 16, 1998, 11:35 a.m. PT
TOKYO--Toshiba today said it plans to triple
production of 64-megabit dynamic random access
memory (DRAM) chips to 10 million chips per
month by March 1999, up from the 3 million per
month planned from March 1998.
A Toshiba spokeswoman said the company expects
to boost production of 64-megabit DRAMs to 8
million chips per month by December 1998.
But Toshiba has yet to decide on capital investment
for its semiconductor division in the year to March
1999, she said. In October, Toshiba said its capital
investment in 1997-98 would be 170 billion yen ($1.3
billion), unchanged from the previous year.
In contrast, its output of 16-megabit DRAMs will be
reduced drastically from a scheduled monthly output
rate of 7 million chips as of March 1998 due to
weakening prices. Toshiba has not made any
decision on how many 16-megabit DRAMs it will
produce in the future, the spokeswoman said.
The computer industry currently uses 16-megabit
chips in the memory modules found in PCs,
portables, workstations, and server computers.
64-megabit chips can pack four times as much data
onto a single chip, giving a standard-sized memory
module four times the capacity. Later this year,
workstations and servers will begin incorporating
64-megabit chips, to be followed by PCs and
notebooks in the later half of 1998 and 1999.
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