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

To: Tony Viola who wrote (29585)	4/15/1999 4:28:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Yamaha to close 0.35-micron fab By Yoshiko Hara EE Times (04/15/99, 1:50 p.m. EDT) TOKYO — In another sign of Japan's troubled semiconductor industry, Yamaha Corp. has decided to close its most-advanced semiconductor production facility, 0.35-micron fab in Hamamatsu, Japan. The plant, which started operations only last June, is scheduled to close next February. Yamaha decided to close the fab, which had the capacity to turn out 7,000 eight-inch wafers a month, because it required further investment than Yamaha could afford, a company spokesman said. Instead, Yamaha will maintain its existing 0.5-micron fab in Kagoshima, which has already been depreciated. Like other Japanese semiconductor companies, Yamaha is struggling. Despite estimated sales in the last fiscal year of about $160 million, the operation is thought to be in the red. Sound-processing LSI chips are the main semiconductor product of Yamaha, which proposed the XG format in 1994 as the next-generation sound-source format. XG maintained backward compatibility with the General MIDI (GM) standard, defined in 1991, while expanding GM functions. GM is a widely accepted format. The Sound Blaster series, for example, complies with the GM format. But "the sharp price drop of personal computers also pushes the price of sound LSIs down," the Yamaha spokesman said. "More and more sound processing is done by software and we anticipate the sound LSI market will shrink." The company is supplying the Super Intelligent Sound Processor, which has an embedded 32-bit RISC processor and complies with the XG format, for use in the Dreamcast system of Sega Enterprises Ltd. But Sega's orders did not prolong the life of the new fab. Yamaha will continue to supply ICs to its clients, including Sega, through outside foundries, the spokesman said. Yamaha will absorb the cost of the closure in the current fiscal year and is looking for a buyer of the fab, a task that is expected to be difficult, analysts said. eetimes.com