Toshiba Boosts Semi Market Investment

Tokyo, Japan: Toshiba expects to increase capital expenditure in semiconductors by 63 billion yen to a total of 289 billion yen. This represents the largest investment the company has directed toward the semiconductor business in a single fiscal year. Most of the new funding will funnel toward expanding capacity at Toshiba Yokkaichi Operations’ 300mm wafer facility, which started to mass-produce NAND flash memory in July last year.

The latest expansion will boost capacity to 70,000 wafers a month in the second half of FY2006, against an original target of 48,750 wafers a month.

Toshiba’s 70nm process technologies, already in use at Yokkaichi’s 200mm wafer fab, will be deployed in the 300mm wafer fab. The fab is also earmarked for transition to 52nm process technology in due course.

The production equipment for Yokkaichi’s 300mm wafer fab will be installed at a manufacturing facility for Flash Partners (a joint venture between Toshiba and the SanDisk Corp.).