Yet another vast memory chip plant is going up, this time in Thailand, and as with Acer Inc in Taiwan, Texas Instruments Inc is the partner. The company is taking a 26% stake in the new plant, which will cost $1,200m to build and will make 16M-bit and 64M-bit memory chips. It will be called Alpha-TI Semiconductions Co Ltd, will site its plant southeast of Bangkok, and Thai businessman Charn Uswachoke, founder of Alphatec Electronics group, will own the remaining 74%. Production starts in the second quarter 1997. Initial output will be 10,000 8 wafers per month. Charn is also the majority owner of SubMicron Technology, Thailand’s only other wafer fabrication project.
