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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (32807)	10/13/1999 4:27:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

300-mm milestone: first products roll out of Infineon/Motorola venture Semiconductor Business News (10/13/99, 01:04:49 PM EDT) DRESDEN, Germany --The first shipment of products made on 300-mm wafers has begun at the Semiconductor300 joint venture between Infineon Technologies AG and Motorola Inc. here. The two partners today announced that the Dresden fab completed qualification of 64-Mbit DRAM products for customer shipments nine months after the plant began running 300-mm wafers early this year. The 12-inch wafer fab is now producing 64-Mbit DRAMs for Infineon's customers and the open market using a 0.25-micron process. "The perception in the industry has been that 300-mm is the Holy Grail and a long way off," said Bill Walker, senior vice president of the Order Fulfillment Organization for Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, based in Austin, Tex. "The fact that we're generating revenue puts that notion to rest." "By being early in the game, we're gaining an intimate familiarity with the tool set that will provide us competitive advantages," Walker added. In February, the 300-mm joint venture announced successful fabrication of its first 64-Mbit DRAM test chip (see Feb. 11 story), and about four months later, the operation reported that its production yields had exceeded the maximum potential from 200-mm wafers (see June 9 story). The joint venture was formally launched in January 1998. Some industry observers have suggested that as soon as the joint venture begins producing products, other chip makers will begin to accelerate their own 300-mm (12-inch) production plans. The 64-Mbit production on 300-mm wafers comes at a time when DRAM capacity is beginning to fall short of user demand. The start of 300-mm production of DRAMs for Infineon could be hitting at just the right time. "This achievement allows us to add volume to our 64-M production," said Andreas von Zitewitz, chief operations officer for Infineon and president of the company's Memory Products Division, based in Munich. "Our stringent qualification procedures have proven that 300-mm products are equivalent to products produced on 200-mm wafers." The 64-Mbit DRAMs are being housed in standard a thin small outline package (TSOP). No information was available about the speed grades of devices being fabricated on the 12-inch substrates. Infineon (formerly the semiconductor division of Siemens AG) and partner Motorola said they have spent more DM 1 billion ($595 million) in R&D expenditures at the Semiconductor300 venture. The fab's mission is to achieve a breakthrough in large-diameter wafer processing and to reduce the cost per chip by 30-40% (at quarter-micron feature sizes) compared to existing 200-mm fabs. semibiznews.com