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To: DJBEINO who wrote (4852)	4/26/1999 3:35:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9582

IBM, Infineon to switch DRAM venture to logic in France A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc. Story posted 11:15 a.m. EST/8:15 a.m., PST, 4/26/99 By Jack Robertson Munich -- IBM Corp.'s operation in France and Siemens AG spinoff Infineon Technologies AG will restructure their cooperative production agreement at a DRAM fab in Corbeil-Essones near Paris. The new joint venture will make logic chips, according to Infineon officials here. The final details of the arrangement are being worked out and new joint venture should be launched shortly, according to Andreas Von Zitzewitz, vice president of operations at Infineon, which formally spun out of Siemens as pure-play semiconductor company earlier this month. Both companies have had a long-standing agreement to share production of DRAMs made at the IBM fab in Corbeil-Essones. Initially the fab produced 4-megabit DRAMs and later 16-Mbit chips. However, the two firms decided to convert the operation into logic chip production rather than invest heavily to upgrade facilities to produce 64-Mbit and higher density DRAMs. Infineon has also been looking for a major DRAM partner to help it achieve greater economies of scale in production. However, Infineon president Ulrich Schumacher said the two DRAM makers (IBM and Toshiba Corp.) with similar trench capacitor DRAM architectures "aren't interested in a joint venture." He said it would be difficult to partner with other DRAM firms with the different stacked capacitor architecture. Infineon, IBM and Toshiba continue a loose partnership in developing the next generation 1-gigabit DRAM design. Instead of the combined development center the three firms used to develop a 256-Mbit DRAM, each partner will design its 1-Gbit chip separately and share technical data with each other.