Fujitsu Ltd will begin shipping unpackaged semiconductor memory – bare chips – as early as this month, according to Nihon Keizai Shimbun. Bare chips are about one-tenth the size of packaged integrated circuits, the space savings could help make portable communications and computing devices smaller and lighter, and save more space for battery capacity. Fujitsu will begin by shipping trays of bare flash memory chips for cellular phones. Electronics makers and other users can mount the chips directly on memory boards designed to accept them. Major Japanese manufacturers have previously hesitated to offer bare chips because they cost more due to the need for special testing and long-term product quality is harder to guarantee.
