June 23, 2003 – Winbond Electronics Corp. announced plans to build a new 12-in wafer plant in central Taiwan.

The plant, to be built within the next two years, will produce flash memory chips and other products, and is not for dynamic random access memory chips, the company said. Unconfirmed local reports have pegged the investment at roughly $1 billion, pending investment from other parties.

Twelve-inch wafer plants cost up to $2.5 billion to build and ramp up, but can help reduce overall chipmaking costs by nearly a third.