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To: Creditman who wrote (1831)	10/9/1999 9:23:00 AM
From: yosi s	Respond to of 1853

Update: Toshiba, SanDisk form new company dedicated to high-density flash production By Andrew MacLellan Electronic Buyers' News (10/08/99, 11:47:21 AM EDT) Flash-memory storage-card manufacturer SanDisk Corp. is fabless no more. In the midst of a worsening flash-chip shortage that has seen leading suppliers selling out well into next year, SanDisk last week forged an agreement with Toshiba Corp. to establish a new manufacturing company dedicated to high-density flash-memory devices. As a newfound proprietor of flash chips, the alliance adds another dimension to SanDisk's market profile, while enabling it to haul in much-needed wafer capacity from Toshiba's plants in Japan and the United States. According to Toshiba, the agreement, which both parties expect to finalize by early next year, will result in a yet-to-be- named third-part venture. The company will design and make 512-Mbit and 1-Gbit chips based on Toshiba's NAND-flash architecture, and incorporating SanDisk's Multi-level Cell (MLC) technology. ?Gigabit-scale flash-memory development is costly and technologically challenging,? said Eli Harari, president and chief executive of SanDisk, Sunnyvale, Calif. ?Toshiba and SanDisk will benefit immensely from combining Toshiba's advanced IC-manufacturing technology with SanDisk's system and multilevel cell design technology.? The new venture will be formed in January, if all goes according to plan, and will use available capacity at Toshiba's ?mother fab? in Yokkaichi, Japan. By the middle of 2001, the company will also have access to 20,000 wafers per month at Toshiba's subsidiary fab, Dominion Semiconductor LLC, based in Manassas, Va. Toshiba and SanDisk will share the output equally, but will market and sell the devices separately. The anticipated production levels from the Yokkaichi site were not available. ?This changes us from a fabless company to a company that has-or will have-a major investment in a fab,? said Dan Auclair, SanDisk's senior vice president of business development and licensing. ?The flash market right now is extremely strong, and we think we will need all of this [capacity] and probably more to meet demand.? To date, SanDisk has used foundry services through Taiwan's UMC Group, and expects to increase its reliance on foundries even as it builds a captive supply. ?This is very positive for SanDisk,? said analyst Alan Niebel of Semico Research Corp., in Monterey, Calif. ?They've got access to two fabs, and that should strengthen their position.? As SanDisk scrambles to secure supply during a period of shortage, Toshiba is eyeing its expertise at the storage-card level. In addition to flash chips, the new company is expected to manufacture controllers for the Secure Digital (SD) memory card, a collaborative effort launched in August by SanDisk, Toshiba, and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. The device is aimed squarely at the emerging market for MP3 audio players. Also viewed as desirable is SanDisk's D2 (Double Density) flash, an MLC technology that Toshiba has so far been unable or unwilling to develop by itself. ?Toshiba looked at the multilevel technology, and we see it as very attractive to increasing the density of Toshiba's NAND-based flash memory,? said Jackie Traeumer, business development manager for non-volatile memory at Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc., Irvine, Calif. The new venture will equip Module 2 of the Dominion fab, which was partially vacated earlier this year when Toshiba's joint-venture partner, IBM Corp, pulled out. The final equipment bill is expected to run as high as $800 million. Initially, Toshiba and SanDisk will each contribute $150 million in cash, with the remainder taking the form of lease lines, according to Auclair. One issue that remains unclear is the extent to which SanDisk will influence Toshiba's manufacturing technology. Toshiba's NAND-flash line currently drafts off advances wrought by its DRAM operations, which could present SanDisk with a challenge if it needs to make alterations to implement its MLC technology, according to observers. Indeed, the Dominion facility will initially use Toshiba's 0.21-micron manufacturing process but will transition to 0.16- and then to 0.13-micron geometries sometime in 2002, at which time the new company is expected to support more than $1 billion in annual sales.

To: Creditman who wrote (1831)	10/20/1999 12:03:00 PM
From: yosi s	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1853

October 19, 1999 ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES via NewsEdge Corporation : HSINCHU, TAIWAN - Macronix International Co., Taiwan's largest maker of flash-memory chips, expects to break ground on a billion-dollar 8-inch silicon wafer plant, its third, in Taiwan during the first quarter of next year. Macronix also is seeking investment partners in a 12-inch fab, starting in 2001. Rising demand for mobile phones, digital cameras and Internet switch products, company sources said, has spurred the growth of the nonvolatile IC market since the beginning of 1999. "Macronix has been seeing a steady inflow of orders for mask ROM and flash-memory chips," said Tom Yiu, vice president of product development for Macronix. "The production lines are operating around the clock to meet demand and are expected to remain that way until at least the second quarter of next year." Macronix has its own 16-Mbit SRAM design that it is now ramping to volumes of several thousand wafers per month. But one securities analyst said in the short term Macronix is likely to have some packaging problems resulting from the Sept. 21 earthquake here. Macronix's Fab 3 will supplement the deficient output of flash-memory chips and embedded memory products. The new fab will produce 8-inch wafers. Monthly output is projected to start at 35,000 units. Yu said that over the past two years Macronix's flash output has increased by 20 to 30 percent, and that will continue on the strength of demand from mobile phones, digital cameras and Internet switches. To meet demand, Macronix signed an OEM contract with Israel's Tower Semiconductor Ltd., which will serve as a second source for Macronix's 8-Mbit flash products for five years, beginning in the first quarter of 2000. Logic foray Macronix is also branching out into the world of logic. Earlier this month it reported securing a large, long-term order of $2 billion from Nintendo to supply custom-designed ASIC chip sets. Macronix said the company is also negotiating for renewed orders with other leading Japanese companies like NEC, Sony and Toshiba. "About 60 percent of Macronix sales are to Nintendo," said a securities analyst here. "They also are doing foundry [work] for Mitsubishi and VLSI." "Currently, we provide about 65 percent of Nintendo's memory demands, " Yiu said. "We are currently developing an ASIC chip for Nintendo's new DVD game player. It is due to be shipped next Christmas. The ASIC is of our own design and we will [manufacture] it for Nintendo." Nintendo's new DVD game player will use a proprietary IBM CPU and a Matsushita-made DVD drive. To meet growing demand, Macronix (www.macronix.com) has applied to float $43.5 million in new shares to raise funds at a premium of 90 cents per share. The company will also issue global depository receipts worth $55 million to boost the output of silicon wafers at its No. 2 plant. Company executives said the Sept. 21 earthquake in Taiwan, and the subsequent power-supply blackout, had forced a suspension of production operations for 10 days and caused a direct loss of about $10 million, though that amount is covered by insurance. The company said full manufacturing operations resumed on Oct. 1. It said rising semiconductor prices may push October's sales revenue past the original projection of $64 million. Copyright c 1999 CMP Media Inc. By Mark Carroll <<ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES -- 10-18-99, p. PG38>> [Copyright 1999, CMP Publications]