Japan's Elpida to make world's largest DRAM plant: report

TOKYO (AFP) Jun 09, 2004
Elpida Memory Inc., the Japanese memory chip maker jointly owned by NEC and Hitachi, plans to invest 500 billion yen (4.5 billion dollars) to build the world's largest DRAM plant, a report said Wednesday.

The plant will begin producing 10,000 300-millimeter wafers of Dynamic Random Access Memory chips per month starting in late 2005, with output to rise to 60,000 by 2007, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, without citing sources.

The current world's largest DRAM plant, operated by Infineon Technologies AG of Germany and Nanya Technology Corp. of Taiwan, is expected to produce 50,000 300-millimeter wafers a month by the end of 2005, it said.

Elpida is ramping up production as it expects demand for DRAM chips to surge from manufacturers of cell phones, personal computers and home electronics goods, the paper said.

Elpida was ranked sixth in the global DRAM market with a 4.3 percent share in 2003, behind market leader Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea with 28.6 percent, it said.

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