July 28, 2003 – Infineon, Munich, Germany, and the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park Venture Co. are setting up a joint venture for assembling and testing memory ICs.

The two entitites plan to invest a total of $1 billion over the next 10 years in Infineon Technologies Suzhou Co., Ltd, which will reside in the Suzhou Park near Shanghai.

At maximum capacity, the facility will employ 1,000 people and churn out 1 billion chips a year, initially, producing 256-Mbit devices in BGA packages. Wafers for further processing will come from collaborative projects with SMIC, Winbond, and Nanya, as well as from facilities in Germany and the US.

The goal of the joint venture is to capture 40% market share in memory products in China, and secure a place among the top four in the domestic microelectronics business within the next five years, according to Infineon President and CEO Ulrich Schumacher.

Work on the facility is scheduled to begin in October 2003, with equipment move-in scheduled for mid-2005 and volume production planned for early 2005.