SAt the same time as confirmation was coming through that the US Memories consortium was no more came news that a government-financed consortium of Taiwanese chipmakers had launched a development project aiming at production of 16M-bit dynamics by 1994. According to Electronic World News, the development project is being headed by the Hsinchu-based Industrial Technology Research Institute which has received an undisclosed amount of funding for the five-year project from the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Consortium members include United Microelectronics Corp, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Advanced Microelectronics Products Taiwan Inc, Silicon Integrated Systems Corp, Winbond Electronics Corp, and Vitelic Taiwan Corp. The six companies will each get the resulting technology to make the chips. Taiwan believes it is too late to got to 4Ms, and ambitiously plans to fabricate 16M-bit memory chips in 0.5 micron CMOS technology.
