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NEC, Samsung Plan to Increase Rambus DRAM Chip Production
Tokyo, Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- NEC Corp., Japan's largest microchip maker, and Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest semiconductor maker, separately said they will increase production of a direct rambus DRAM chips to meet an expected increase in demand.
NEC said it will boost output of the direct rambus chips, which are used in top-end PCs, to 5 million by the end of the year, when it aims to have a 20 percent share of the market, said Hideki Inukai, a memory division manager at NEC.
Samsung said it aims to produce 500,000 of the chips a month before June, increasing to 33 million annually by next year and aims to take a 30 percent to 35 percent share of the market.
Demand for direct rambus chips is estimated to exceed current world production capacity by about 10 times because many chipmakers have not invested in the equipment and technology needed to make them, analysts say.
''There aren't many companies that can make these chips at the moment,'' said Mami Indo, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research.
Analysts say chipmakers hesitated to spend money building machines needed to miniaturize and test the speed of direct rambus chips because of losses they incurred from a 60 percent plunge in 64-bit DRAM prices last year.
The highest demand for the direct rambus chips is expected to come from Intel Corp., which plans to use them in its next generation of high-speed microprocessors.
NEC said it planned to invest 5 billion yen ($44 million) to set up assembly and testing lines at factories in Japan, Singapore and the U.K.
08:00:00 01/22/1999
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