Japan opens national Tsukuba research fab, complains about other projects
08/01/2002
Japan officially opened its government-funded research fab in Tsukuba on June 17, planning to run the first wafers last month. The 22,000m2 facility, with a staff of 400, will serve as a pilot line to link Japan's labs and fabs.
"Japan needs its own unique model for a national foundry," said MIRAI project leader Masataka Hirose at the opening. "It needs a foundry that can serve as a mechanism for absorbing advanced research from outside the company and converting it rapidly into production technology."
Selete will use the new 3000m2 Class 3 cleanroom for the US$540 million (¥70 billion), seven-year Asuka project to develop advanced process technology for SOC. The MIRAI and HALCA projects will share the other 1500m2 Class 5 cleanroom. MIRAI has a US$35 million (x4.6 billion) budget this year to work on high-k gate stacks, low-k modules, lithography, and metrology for next-generation devices. HALCA has US$60 million (¥8 billion) for three years to develop a production line using 60% less electricity.
Government funding for joint research is an easy sell to profitless companies, but the bureaucrats' push for a shared production foundry has met with less enthusiasm. Though the 0.1μm consortium using NEC's Sagamihara fab is initially a joint development project, METI — the ministry that has long pushed companies in struggling industries like steel and shipbuilding into mergers and cartels to allocate the scrapping of excess capacity and smooth restructuring costs — wants to create an all-Japan foundry.
But when the Nihon Keizai Shimbun interviewed a selection of senior chip executives, it got an earful, even from some participating in the project. NEC president Koji Nishigaki told the newspaper he thought the next generation of fabs would indeed be shared. Fujitsu's Masamichi Ogura, president of the Electronic Devices Group, said, however, "We will participate [in the project], but which foundry we'll use is another matter. If Taiwan producers also have the advanced technology, we'll probably use them."
Mitsubishi Electric senior managing director Koichi Nagasawa concurred. "It makes no sense to do the same thing as the Taiwan foundries. We should develop unique, high-performance technologies."
Now Toshiba and Fujitsu have announced a 100nm technology cooperation agreement of their own. Though both are participating in the national project, they say their own new agreement to jointly develop a common design environment for 100nm, and process and processor IP, will focus on higher added value beyond the standard.
Even the bureaucrats urging these plans to revive Japan's semiconductor industry do not seem so convinced they can do much this time around.
"Politically, they feel like they have to do something," says Marie Anchordogy, professor at the University of Washington, who recently interviewed METI officials for a book. "But they're not real confident of success. No one thought this was going to work." — P.D.