Major Japanese semiconductor makers NEC Corp and Toshiba Corp are following the lead of Korea’s Samsung Electronics (CI No 3,760) and immediately suspending production of Direct Rambus DRAMs in reaction to Intel’s postponement of the launch of its new 820 chipset.
NEC, like Samsung, has decided to re-fit facilities it was using for RDRAM production to synchronous DRAM production instead. It had originally planned to ship about a million Rambus chips monthly to PC makers between October and December from its plants in Japan and Scotland.
While Toshiba has halted output of Rambus chips for PCs it will continue producing them for the PlayStation 2 game console to be marketed next spring by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
