May 31, 2004 — Renesas Technology Corp., the chipmaking JV formed in April 2003 by Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric Corp., has purchased two chipmaking plants from Hitachi Ltd. for Y1.2 billion ($10.9 million) to use for wafer processing and chip packaging, according to theNihon Keizai Shimbun.

The facilities in the Tokyo suburb of Ome, previously used to etch circuits on wafers, were acquired through Renesas’ manufacturing subsidiary, Renesas Eastern Japan Semiconductor Inc., which will sell older production equipment before moving in its own equipment.

With the investment, the subsidiary will effectively raise its output capacity for large-scale integrated circuits by 20% to 18 million units/month.