Siemens AG and Motorola Inc finally opened their White Oak Semiconductor facility in Richmond, Virginia yesterday, a jointly owned eight-inch semiconductor plant that has cost the two companies some $1.5bn. White Oak has 1,000 employees and covers 800,000 square feet, and is designed for fully integrated wafer manufacturing, assembly and final test. White Oak claims to have been the first plan to achieve silicon of 64Mb dynamic RAM chips in 0.25 micron technology, and is currently ramping up production of the DRAM chips, which will be its initial product. These will be marketed by Siemens, following Motorola’s decision last year to exit the Dynamic RAM market (CI No 3,194). Motorola will use its share of the plant to produce fast static RAM chips, due to be added to the plant’s product portfolio later this year. Siemens hopes to make the plant pay in a difficult market through faster ramp ups, shorter development cycles and better quality production. á
