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

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (43427)	3/9/2001 3:47:48 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

TSMC to close fab that started foundry movement By Mike Clendenin EE Times (03/09/01 08:19 a.m. PST) TAIPEI, Taiwan — Nostalgia be damned. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. is closing Fab 1, the initial fabrication facility of the trail blazing pure-play foundry. The company said Friday (March 9) that it will decommission the six-inch wafer plant by next March because it made more sense to shift the operational investment to leading-edge processes. There will be no layoffs and the closure is not expected to impact TSMC's predicted capacity for this year of 4.5 million eight-inch equivalent wafers. A company spokeswoman stressed that the closure is not related to the current chip industry downturn. "We are closing an old fab. That's it. If it had anything to do with the downturn, then we would close it right now," she said. TSMC launched the foundry concept in 1987 at the site of Fab 1, located on the compound of the Taiwan government's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Hsinchu. Since then it has churned out a steady flow of about 20,000 six-inch wafers a month — about 11,000 eight-inch equivalents — using a process of 0.50 micron or higher. The company said it considered keeping the fab open, but the government was not responsive enough to the TSMC's overtures to renew the lease. The facility will be returned to ITRI, which has leased it to TSMC until March 31, 2002. ITRI could not be reached for comment on the government's plans for the fab. Customers whose products are scheduled to be manufactured at the plant are being notified, the TSMC spokeswoman said. All the products made at Fab 1, which represents about 3 percent of TSMC's total capacity, will be shifted to other sites along with the fab's equipment. Little impact is expected from the transition, the spokeswoman said. TSMC has another six-inch plant but there are no plans to mothball it at present. "Fab 1 was a lab that was then converted to a fab. Fab 2 is about four times as large" with a capacity of about 44,000 eight-inch equivalent wafers per month, the spokeswoman said. TSMC also has nine eight-inch plants, operates a joint venture with Phillips Semiconductors in Singapore, and is building two 12-inch wafer plants in Taiwan. Despite Fab 1 being the genesis of the now firmly established foundry movement, TSMC doesn't have any plans to commemorate its final days. "I'm sorry to say that people here at TSMC aren't that romantic. But that's a good thought," the spokeswoman said.