The Japanese majors have decided not to wait for the memory chip market to revive before driving the switch to 64M-bit from 16M- bit parts, and according to the Nippon Keizai Shimbun, NEC Corp, Toshiba Corp, Hitachi Ltd, Fujitsu Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp plan to raise output of 64Ms this year tenfold. Combined output from the five is planned to rise to 7.5m this year from from 700,000 at the end of 1996. NEC will increase its output to 3m from the current 500,000 by switching its facilities in Hiroshima and in Livingston, Scotland over to 64Ms from 16Ms – and We’ll consider upping production to 5m units if there is demand, it added. Market sources told the paper that 64Ms will cost on average $565 this month, down from $775 a year ago, and they are expected to reach parity with 16Ms by mid-year, falling to around four times the price of 16Ms by mid-1997, down from 10 times now. Just two 64M-bit memory chips will be needed to equip a personal computer 16Mb main memory, the amount needed to run Windows95.
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