Toshiba, SanDisk Plan to 55nm

Online staff -- Electronic News, 2/22/2005

Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. have completed a joint 300mm, NAND flash fabrication facility at Toshiba's Yokkaichi operations, expected to come on line in the second half of 2005, with 10,000 wafers per month by late this year on a 90nm basis.

That will quickly migrate, the companies said, to a 70nm process in the first half of 2006, leading to 40,000 wafers a month by the first half of 2007. The 300mm fab is also slated to mass-produce NAND flash memory based on 55nm in late 2006.

The duo further noted that the fab still has space to expand capacity, and additional investment could take output to as high as 62,500 wafers a month. Output during each phase of expansion is expected to be equally shared between Toshiba and SanDisk.

"We are very happy to complete the construction of this new state-of-the-art NAND flash fab in collaboration with SanDisk," Masashi Muromachi, corporate VP of Toshiba Corp. and president and CEO of Toshiba's Semiconductor, said in a statement.

"We believe the NAND market will see annual growth rates over 30 percent from 2004 to 2008, from 700 billion yen to 2,100 billion yen [$6.7 billion to $20 billion], and we expect to see approximately 200 percent annual growth in bit storage capacity. We expect the new fab will assure our responsiveness to growing demand for higher-density NAND flash in an increasingly strong market," he concluded.

Toshiba and SanDisk started construction of the fab in April 2004. The total investment in the new fab, called Fab 3, is expected to approach $2.6 billion (270 billion yen) by the end of March 2007. Flash Partners Ltd., a Toshiba-SanDisk venture established in September 2004, 50.1 percent owned by Toshiba and 49.9 percent by SanDisk, will fund the advanced manufacturing equipment to be installed in Fab 3.