Tokyo, Japan and Taipei, Taiwan – Hitachi Ltd., and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) have agreed to discontinue the joint management of Trecenti Technologies Inc., the 300mm fab company located in Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki prefecture, Japan.
To complete the transaction, Hitachi will acquire the entire 40% of Trecenti stock owned by UMC, making Trecenti a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi. The transaction will be closed by the end of April.
Trecenti was established in March 2000, and started manufacturing operations in March 2001. Facing the present semiconductor industry downturn, Hitachi and UMC have decided to focus their resources on their individual company’s respective 300mm efforts.
UMC will concentrate on its wholly owned Fab 12A in Taiwan and UMCi subsidiary in Singapore, while Hitachi will focus on Trecenti. Trecenti’s UMC employees will return to UMC, while those transferred or dispatched from Hitachi will remain at Trecenti.
“Hitachi will use Trecenti, which will be our most advanced fab, along with Hitachi Nippon Steel Semiconductor Singapore Pte. Ltd. and the N2 line in Naka, in order to manufacture System LSIs, flash memories and SRAMs,” said Hitachi’s Satoru Ito, president and CEO of semiconductor and ICs.