Asia / Pacific

10/01/1998

Asia/Pacific

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Hsinchu, Taiwan, has ramped its 0.25-?m process to high yield production in record time to support accelerating customer demand. About 15 0.25-?m customer products are not being fabbed at TSMC. These include products for the CPU, programmable logic, DSP, and multimedia markets. More than 100 customers are now running 0.25-?m design libraries from TSMC`s 14 library partners.

Amkor Technology, South Korea, is planning to expand its first wafer fab from 15,000 to 25,000 wafer/month capacity by the end of the year. The company also envisions starting construction of additional fabs in 1999 and 2000, said John Weekley, VP of marketing. In addition, work has begun on the transfer of the 0.18-?m six-layer-metal Timeline process from nonequity partner Texas Instruments, which takes at least 40% of output from the Amkor facility and has already provided 0.35-, 0.25-, and 0.18-?m process technology.

Union Petrochemical Corp., Taipei, Taiwan, and Ashland Chemical Co., Dublin, OH, have signed an agreement to form a joint venture to build and operate an ultrapure process chemicals manufacturing facility in Taiwan to serve the region`s growing semiconductor industry. Each company will have a 50% interest in the joint venture, named Ashland Union Electronic Chemical Corp. Construction is to begin January 1999, with manufacturing beginning January 2000.

Taiwan foundry Mosel Vitelic has scaled back capital investments this year. "The capital investment from Mosel Vitelic in this year is definitely lower than last year owing to the downturn of DRAM business," said Thomas Chang, VP with Mosel`s manufacturing division, without quantifying the cuts. Changes at the firm`s ProMos joint venture with Siemens may also be on tap. Investments there will meet capacity of 20,000 wafers/month, but a planned expansion is now under review.