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To: Jong Hyun Yoo who wrote (3260)	8/18/1999 7:26:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 5867

NEC to expand flash production By Anthony Cataldo EE Times (08/17/99, 5:21 p.m. EDT) TOKYO - Responding to the flash-memory supply crunch, NEC Corp. has decided to expand its line of flash-memory products to include a 32-Mbit NOR-type flash device, according to a company spokesman. NEC will soon begin low-volume production of the 32-Mbit devices. By next spring or summer the company expects to boost output to 1 million units per month. The devices will be produced with 0.25-micron design rules at NEC's semiconductor fab in Hiroshima, one of several NEC fabs in Japan in which the company has decided to increase its investment. By adding a 32-Mbit device to its portfolio, NEC hopes to satisfy the healthy demand for flash used in such portable applications as cell phones. The spokesman said NEC intends to combine the flash chips with a 4-Mbit SRAM device in a multichip module, a packaging configuration that is being widely embraced among Japan's semiconductor suppliers as a way to the reduce weight and size of cell phones. NEC will begin production of the new devices this month and intends initially to focus mostly on the Japanese market. Eventually it will sell to regions like Europe, where cell phone sales are soaring, the spokesman said. Late start NEC, the world's second largest semiconductor maker, has for the most part sat on the fence in the flash market throughout much of the decade, wavering between making an aggressive entry and leaving the market to larger players such as Intel and AMD in the United States and Sharp and Fujitsu in Japan. So far, the company has kept a relatively low profile in the flash market; it now produces about 300,000 of the 4- and 8-Mbit NOR-type devices a month, the spokesman said. In 1997, NEC and SanDisk agreed to co-design an 80-Mbit flash device for data-storage applications. The NEC spokesman said ?some chips [are] being produced? but offered no details. NEC researchers continue to develop flash cells, architectures and manufacturing processes. Since 1998, the company has about two-dozen U.S. patents for flash-device technology, including some for NAND-type flash, favored by companies like Samsung, Toshiba, AMD and Fujitsu for data-storage applications. But NEC plans to stay focused on NOR-type chips, used heavily in cell phones. ?I think next year when we hit our million (per month) target is when we'll make our big push,? he said. eetimes.com