Llucent and chartered from joint venture in singapore
04/01/1998
Lucent and Chartered form joint venture in Singapore
Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Pte. Ltd. and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. have formed wafer manufacturing company Silicon Manufacturing Partners Pte. Ltd., a $1 billion joint venture in Singapore. Lucent owns 51%of the venture, with Chartered owning 49%.
Silicon Manufacturing is located on Chartered`s fab campus at the Woodlands Industrial Park in Singapore. Equipment is now being installed in the facility`s cleanroom. Scheduled for completion in 4Q98, the fab will initially employ 400, with 800 expected by 2001. The joint venture will produce 200-mm wafers using 25-nm (0.25-?m) design rules, with migration to 18-nm processing by 2000. At full capacity, the facility will produce 26,000 wafers/month.
The new facility will manufacture a variety of ICs, such as ASICs and DSPs, using process technology developed by Lucent`s research arm Bell Laboratories, as well as technologies developed by Chartered. The two companies have worked together in the past. For dedicated foundry Chartered, the joint venture guarantees capacity to Lucent. In return, Chartered gains access to Lucent`s advanced processes.
Both companies will share the facility`s production output. Lucent`s customers will use ICs from the fab in computing and communications equipment. Chartered will use its portion of the capacity to support its customers around the world. The joint venture also benefits the companies by leveraging the capital-intensive investment of building a fab.
With manufacturing facilities in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Madrid, Spain, the Silicon Manufacturing venture is Lucent`s first manufacturing facility in Asia. The venture will complement Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group`s semiconductor assembly and test facility and Bell Laboratories R&D facility in Singapore, and allow Lucent to service major customers in the region. Lucent has about 1400 employees in Singapore. About one-third of Lucent`s semiconductor revenues came from the Asia-Pacific region in 1997, noted John Dickson, president of Lucent`s Microelectronics Group. - L.S.