TOKYO, 2 March 2004 — Toshiba Corporation has completed a new 48,800m2 factory to produce 300mm wafers at its Oita Operations in Kyushu. The new plant is due to begin production later this year and will mass-produce high-performance system-on-chip (SoC) largescale integrations (LSIs) with extremely high levels of integration. A 200 billion yen investment program running from 2003 to 2007 will bring production capacity to 12,500 wafers a month. That can be expanded to 17,500 a month with further investment.
Toshiba is reinforcing its leadership in the increasingly important market for the advanced SoCs at the heart of today’s digital consumer products and the new plant has a crucial role to play in this strategy. It will draw on Toshiba’s industry-leading know-how in embedded DRAM process technology-essential for high-performance system LSIs and will also be the first semiconductor facility in the world to deploy 65-nanometer process and design technologies.
In the future, Toshiba expects the new facility to lead the industry in introducing 45nm process technology and applying it to SoC devices. The new facility places Toshiba in the vanguard of LSI production, enhancing capacity and output and equipping the company to supply the global market with the world’s most powerful SoC devices, while supporting the company in promoting a total solutions business in LSI.
Advanced SoCs slated for manufacture include wide-ranging system LSIs such as next-generation image processing microprocessor for digital consumer electronics, mobile products, and broadband networks. The new plant is the first of two advanced 300mm-wafer facilities for Toshiba. The second, to be built at Yokkaichi Operations in Mie, Japan, will support the company in meeting fast growing demand for NAND flash memory.