Hitachi Ltd is to spend around $199.2m converting three memory chip production plants, two in Japan and one in Germany, into fabs that make microchips for consumer electronics devices. Cliff Keys, European marketing and communications manager, said that Hitachi is converting the facilities because of the depressed state of the DRAM market and the increased demand for system-on-a-chip components and other consumer-use microprocessors. We make the chips the market dictates we will, he said.
Hitachi will invest between $121.3m and $161.7m on its Naka plant in Japan. It plans to turn the plant into a mass production system-on-a-chip and merged memory/logic LSIs facility over the next few years. The other Japanese plant, in Takasaki, is being converted to build high frequency LSIs for mobile phones at a cost of $80.9m. Hitachi expects to have mass production lines ready by the end of 2000.
The plant in Germany will be converted from a DRAM fab to an automotive chip plant by the end of this year at a cost of $56.6m. Hitachi may make additional investments to implement more advanced process technologies, if that becomes necessary.
The race to 0.18 micron process technology is in full swing in Japan. Fujitsu Microelectronics will start volume production of 0.18 micron ASICs in October. Meanwhile, Keys said that Hitachi had been testing 0.18 micron process technologies in Japan and that mass production was about to start. The two Japanese plants will both use the advanced process technology. However, Keys said that the German plant would only be upgraded to 0.25 micron process technology, which is still considered cutting edge in Europe.
