Japan

06/01/1997

Japan

ULVAC Japan Ltd. and Ramtron International Corp., Colorado Springs, CO, will develop thin-film process systems and materials for use in ferroelectric RAM (FRAM) manufacturing. FRAM technology, developed and owned by Ramtron, features high-speed reprogrammable nonvolatile memory that operates without power consumption. Although ULVAC has been independently developing thin-film (sputtering) deposition systems and materials for FRAM applications, this multiyear joint development program is expected to accelerate the development of highly integrated FRAMs fabricated with ULVAC`s thin-film process technology and also result in technology transfers to Ramtron licensees.

Foreign chipmakers penetrate Japan`s market. Non-Japanese chip-producing nations continued to make inroads in the Japanese semiconductor market during 3Q96 as foreign market share climbed nearly 1%, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). SIA president Thomas W. Armstrong attributed the inroads to the existence of an active and cooperative trade agreement with the Japanese. Foreign penetration of the Japanese chip market grew from 14.3% in 1991 to 27.1% in 3Q96, the second highest total recorded during the 10 years of monitoring Japan`s market.

Mitsubishi Electric, Tokyo, has purchased a 36,000-m2 plot of land adjacent to its Kochi Factory in Kami, Kochi Prefecture, Japan, with the intention of building a 300-mm fab facility for production of 256-Mbit DRAMs. Plans call for the facility to be completed in 1999. The fab will reportedly be built in a square building, in an effort to minimize the distances wafers must travel while undergoing processing. Mitsubishi`s existing Kochi fab has a capacity of 8750, 150-mm wafers/week, and produces a variety of memory, logic, and ASIC devices with design rules of 0.6-1.0 ?m, according to market researcher Integrated Circuit Engineering.

Hitachi Instrument Division, Hitachinaka, Japan, will ship its next-generation 300-mm automated CD-SEM system to the International 300mm Initiative in Austin, TX. The Hitachi 300NX CD-SEM provides a laser interferometer stage, high throughput, fully automated CD measurement, and high precision. The system is based in part on the S-8000 series automated CD-SEMs. Another 300NX system will be shipped in 1997 to SELETE, Japan`s 300-mm group.

Varian Associates Inc., Palo Alto, CA, has formed Varian Japan K.K., a wholly owned subsidiary headquartered in Tokyo, to support the growing customer base in the instrumentation, semiconductor equipment, and diagnostic imaging equipment industries. The subsidiary will replace Varian Japan Ltd., a US company with a branch office in Japan. Varian Japan K.K. will staff about 130 people including nearly 50 temporary employees from Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL), who are being added under an agreement Varian and TEL announced in December.

Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor (FASL) will double its monthly output of flash memory chips with the help of a new 30 billion yen (about $243 million) fab extension. FASL, a joint venture between Fujitsu and Advanced Micro Devices, is finishing construction work on the FASL-2 flash memory fab. The new 280,000-ft2 facility is being built adjacent to the company`s existing flash memory FASL-1 fab in Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, and will bring the company`s monthly flash memory output to 50,000, 200-mm wafers, or 7 million 4-Mbit chips/month.