Taiwans Tainan soon ready for fabs

04/01/1997

Sony to build 300-mm facility in Nagasaki

Sony has announced plans to turn an employee parking lot into a 300-mm fab. According to the current timetable, initial production at Sony`s 300-mm fab will begin in 1999. The Tokyo-based company has already purchased land adjacent to its subsidiary, Sony Nagasaki, in Nagasaki Prefecture for the project, and is now using the site as a parking area for its employees.

This disclosure follows Texas Instruments` recent announcement that it would build a 300-mm fab in Italy (WaferNews 4.2), with an eye toward ramping production in 1999. While Sony is not generally considered one of the most advanced chipmakers, the company has taken an aggressive stance on 300-mm.

"I was surprised at the level of interest (Sony) had in 300 mm," commented Frank Robertson, general manager of the International 300-mm Initiative. He noted that Sony and Fujitsu, alone among Japanese companies, had attended two preliminary I300I meetings. Neither joined the organization; the top Japanese semiconductor firms have all agreed to take part in the SELETE and J300 development organizations, and political considerations likely argued against participation in I300I. "It looks like 1999 will be the year of [300-mm] manufacturing facility startups," added Robertson.

Despite a fairly difficult year for its semiconductor operation, Sony is currently riding high on a favorable yen-dollar exchange rate and good sales of its Playstation video game and Minidisc audio discs. This year Sony will install equipment worth a total of some 50 billion yen (about US$403 million) on a new fab line for 0.25-micron devices at Sony Kokubu, its large scale integration (LSI) manufacturing subsidiary in Kagoshima Prefecture. The new line, located at Sony`s former bipolar LSI manufacturing site, will start operation in 1998 with a capacity of 10,000 200-mm wafers/month. Using 0.25-micron design rules developed by both Sony and Oki Electric, the new lines will produce system LSIs for digital video and audio signal processing used in Sony products, such as Playstations and Minidisc players. - P.N.D.