Wuxi, China's largest wafer manufacturing plant

STMicroelectronics and other large semiconductor manufacturers recently as Hynix Semiconductor memory chip is a joint venture established in Jiangsu city of Wuxi province China factory held a formal opening ceremony.

The new factory will be responsible for manufacturing NAND and DRAM flash memory chips, both sides will gain economies of scale economic benefit, realize complementary advantages in the manufacturing process and product development.

Wuxi Fab will accelerate the STMicroelectronics NAND flash market pace, but also for the embedded system with flash memory manufacturers to provide stacking in high performance with cost competitive with DRAM chip. The new plant will help expand the production capacity of the Hynix 12 inch production line and strengthen its leading position in the world's fastest growing semiconductor market in china. Hynix DRAM currently ranks first in China, according to the latest iSupply data show that the market share of about 47%. After the completion of the plant in Wuxi, Hynix has added a global manufacturing base, which has a global manufacturing base in Eugene, Oregon, USA.

Two companies on April 2005 held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new factory, the factory covers an area of 550000 square meters, clean room of 20000 square meters, 8 inch and 12 inch production line mass production in July 2006 and October respectively. At present, DRAM chip using 80nm, 90nm and 110Nm manufacturing process, 90nm and 110Nm wafer production line in 8 inches, 80nm wafer production in the production line of 12 inches. Next year, the two production lines in addition to the production of existing DRAM, will also start the production process of advanced NAND flash. In terms of capacity, 8 inch production line is expected to produce wafers of 50000 wafers per month, the monthly output of the 12 inch production line will reach up to 18000 wafers. The two sides will be distributed according to market conditions, product and memory density.

New Wuxi plant will be the largest Chinese wafer manufacturing plant, a total investment of the joint venture for $2 billion, STMicroelectronics and Hynix Semiconductor shares of 1/3:2/3, China local financial institutions and STMicroelectronics provides loan plan for the joint venture company. The joint venture employs approximately 2000 employees, most of whom come from the local workforce.

"In South Korea and Europe, similar to the joint venture, the joint venture may be the biggest," STMicroelectronics president and CEO Carlo Bozotti said, "the new joint venture will bring huge scale economic benefits to both sides, both sides realize complementary advantages in technology. Access to competitive cost of DRAM products, while co developing NAND products, will further strengthen the ST in the integrated market leader in the packaging level. This is an important technique in the same package stacking a plurality of memory chips, and China users all over the world can increase the memory density and reliability of the equipment by using this technology, but also save the mobile phone and other consumer electronics and industrial application of circuit board space."

"Mobile phone, digital camera, Walkman and other portable devices demand for storage capacity is more and more high, in this trend, driven by the 2005 NAND flash market growth rate reached the highest level in the history of the semiconductor market," vice president and general manager of memory products division STMicroelectronics Mario Licciardello said, "12 inch wafer production line from 60 nm SLC (single unit) and MLC (multi unit) NAND technique to 55nm the following node transition, will help us meet the market growth, to meet the mobile phone and digital consumer market users demand solutions to the memory of high performance and low cost."

Market research company iSuppli expects DRAM market growth will reach 24.4%, sales revenue will reach $30 billion 900 million in 2006, NAND market growth will reach 17%, sales revenue will reach $12 billion 600 million. China is the world's fastest growing semiconductor market, the Chinese market accounted for about 15% of the global market. China will become the world's largest semiconductor market by 2008, accounting for more than 1/4 of the global semiconductor market, according to market research firms.