September 19, 2007 – Staking its claim as the first 300mm NOR flash fab, Spansion Inc. says it has begun production of 65mnm process-based MirrorBit NOR flash memory devices at its SP1 300mm fab in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, with shipments due out by year’s end.

In a presentation, Spansion execs say they reached 65nm/300mm production in 31 months, having transferred the process technology earlier this year from its Submicron Development Center R&D site in the US, and a 45nm NOR flash now running in full flow development at SDC will be brought over sometime in 2008, after just 21 months. Later in 2008, foundry partner TSMC (which already makes Spansion’s 110-90nm MirrorBit devices) will migrate its Spansion work to 65nm.

SP1, Spansion’s first fab since it was spun off from an AMD-Fujitsu JV in late 2005 in a $500 million IPO, is the beneficiary of most of Spansion’s planned $1.2B capex budget. Starting capacity is expected to be about half of the site’s eventual full capacity of 30,000-40,000 wafers/month. Tooling started in early 2007, with first silicon (full integration lot) out by June.

Spansion’s other fab at Aizu-Wakamatsu, JV3, supports 110nm MirrorBit production, and a fab in Austin, TX, offers 90-65nm MirrorBit capacity. Besides TSMC, Spansion also partners with Fujitsu to make a variety of MirrorBit and floating-gate technologies at more mature process nodes (0.32-0.20-micron).