Undaunted by the hard-pressed state of the semiconductor industry, NEC Electronics Inc is to spend $1.4bn on a 300mm, 0.15 micron wafer manufacturing facility next to its existing chip plant in Roseville, California. The money will be spent over the next four years, and the bill shared between NEC Electronics and its NEC Corp patent, which says it backed the plan based on the company’s anticipation and preparation to meet future customer demands for high performance multimedia and system-on-a-chip semiconductor products, as well as high-density 256-megabit and 1-gigabit DRAMs. The new plant, to be known as the G-line, should become operational in 2002, although the time-scales depend on market conditions and the state of development of 300mm wafer equipment and technology. NEC says it will monitor the market closely, and in the meantime learn about the changes 300mm wafers will require. Once up and running, the plant should be capable of churning out 20,000 wafers per month and will create about 700 new jobs. The two-storey plant will have 600,000 square feet of space, compared with 709,000 square feet in the existing plant. NEC built its original Roseville plant in 1982, the first major semiconductor investment in the US by a Japanese company. With the G-line complete, NEC’s total investment in Roseville will be around $3bn.
