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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: richard surckla who wrote (26229)	8/2/1999 11:59:00 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

>you don't know everything.. But at least, I... am a quick learner...LOL!!! quote.bloomberg.com Don

To: richard surckla who wrote (26229)	8/3/1999 12:19:00 AM
From: richard surckla	Respond to of 93625

DRAM facility Dominion to build NAND-type parts -- Toshiba puts U.S. fab to work on flash David Lammers IRVINE, CALIF. - With its ASIC fabs full and lead times for logic products stretching out, Toshiba Corp. is moving to fix the memory side of its IC business. While keeping its hand in DRAMs, Toshiba's semiconductor operations will emphasize the NAND flash-memory product line, a serial architecture ideal for storing multimedia data, said Bob Brown, president of Toshiba America Electronic Components here. Toshiba will convert a portion of the Dominion Semiconductor fab (Manassas, Va.) to flash production by the fourth quarter, and expects to make as many as 500,000 NAND devices per month there, primarily in the 256-Mbit and 512-Mbit densities. Toshiba recently agreed to buy out IBM Corp.'s stake in Dominion, which was started three years ago as a joint-venture DRAM fab. At Toshiba's main memory fab in Yokkaichi, Japan, as many as 3 million NAND chips will be manufactured each month, primarily at the 1-Gbit density. Toshiba is in a push-pull situation in its memory operations. The push behind flash production comes as the NAND-type flash-invented at Toshiba in 1989-has started to come into its own as a way of storing multimedia data types on flash-based memory cards. The pull, of course, stems from the miserable prices accorded commodity DRAMs, and difficulties in getting the Rambus DRAMs to yield at the promised speeds. With a serial architecture that combines a series of memory bits with a single switching transistor, the NAND-type flash architecture has a higher bit density than the NOR-type flash parts sold by Intel Corp. and others. While the initial "turn-on" period for a first access is longer, the serial flash architectures work well with streaming data types found in digital still cameras, MP3 audio players and other applications. To foster its flash business, Toshiba created SmartMedia, an overmolded package that serves as a flash-memory storage card largely for consumer applications, where cost is at a premium. Two 256-Mbit die can be packaged in a single thin small-outline package for a 512-Mbit flash part, the highest-density flash IC on the market, Brown said. For the slower-speed-grade Direct Rambus parts, Toshiba has a ready customer. Sony Corp. will use the 600-Mbit Direct Rambus memories in the Playstation II game machine, coming on the Japan market later this year. But not all of Toshiba's Rambus capacity will be consumed by that one principal customer, Brown said. Rambus capacity aplenty Advancing the process technology to the 0.18-micron design rules at Yokkaichi-and at its foundry partners Winbond Corp. and World Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., both in Hsinchu, Taiwan-will give Toshiba plenty of capacity to manufacture Direct Rambus parts beyond the needs of Sony. However, Brown said he believes the DRAM market will remain divided between the faster synchronous DRAMs and the Direct Rambus offerings for "quite some time." Toshiba's strategy is to remain in the DRAM business, though Brown said that "we are not looking to be a market-share leader or a volume leader in DRAMs. But they are still a driver for our next-generation process technology." The good news at Toshiba, and elsewhere, is that the boom in demand for communications ICs has resulted in brisk business on the logic side. Two of Toshiba's five largest-volume customers are in networking, and Brown said he is "getting calls every day" from fabless companies that want access to Toshiba's logic capacity. "We are converting capacity, moving memory production out of our Oita complex and increasing wafers for logic production. And we are sending more business to WSMC on a foundry basis. Toshiba's ASIC capacity is full, and lead times are stretched out. We are emphasizing system logic, particularly with embedded DRAM," but for now, "we are design-resource-limited," Brown said. Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc. techweb.com