Ryoichi Tetsui, SI Japan -- Semiconductor International, 9/28/2007 3:57:00 PM
Toshiba Corp. (Tokyo), bolstered by the recent completion of its newest 300 mm NAND fab, plans to retake share in the NAND flash memory market, executives said recently.
“We are aiming to achieve the No.1 position in the world NAND flash memory market in 2008,", said Atsutoshi Nishida, president and CEO of Toshiba. The company plans to start mass production in December at Fab 4, a massive building located at the company’s Yokkaichi operations. Already, executives are mulling plans to build Fab 5 nearby.
Currently, Samsung Electronics Co. (Seoul, South Korea) has a 45% market share, followed by ~35% for Toshiba and its partner, SanDisk Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.) The Toshiba-SanDisk alliance expects to move up to >40% share by the end of 2008, executives said.
The partners plan to make continuous investments at Fab 4, they said, leveraging rapid scaling and multi-level cell technology to create higher density NAND memories. Toshiba will employ a 56 nm process when Fab 4 begins volume production, and the company plans a gradual transition to 43 nm technology starting from March 2008.
Kiyoshi Kobayashi, general manager of the memory division of Toshiba Semiconductor Co., said Toshiba plans to introduce 3 bit/cell technology in the second half of 2008, in addition to 2 bit/cell technology.
Spurred by continuously rising demand for NAND devices, Toshiba and SanDisk agreed in June 2006 to build Fab 4, establishing Flash Alliance Ltd., a Toshiba-SanDisk venture that is 50.1% owned by Toshiba and 49.9% by SanDisk. Construction of Fab 4 began in August 2006, and took only 13 months from start to completion. Toshiba funded construction of the Fab 4 building, and Flash Alliance is funding the manufacturing equipment. Fab 4 is a five story building with a building area of ~35,500 m2 (382,000 square feet), and a floor space of ~181,000 m2 (1,948,000 square feet).
Fab 4's production capacity is expected to reach 80,000 wafers per month in the second half of calendar year 2008. Although Fab 4's maximum production capacity is estimated to be 210,000 wafers per month, the companies plan to make further investments in accordance with the projected demand increase in the NAND flash memory market.
Since Toshiba has an aggregate production capacity of 200,000 wafers per month (300 mm equivalent) using Fab 1, Fab 2, and Fab 3, the addition of Fab 4’s full capacity would double the total capacity to 410,000 wafers per month.
With the completion of Fab 4, Toshiba would have world's largest production capacity, according to the company.
The Fab 4 building was designed to maintain stable operations in the face of disasters such as earthquakes, power failures, power fluctuations caused by lightning strikes, and the like. The entire building was constructed as an earthquake absorbing structure which dampens the force of a temblor by up to two-thirds. It is equipped with redundant power supplies and MPC (multiple power compensation) facilities, which minimize any impact on operations from sudden power disruptions, and momentary droops in voltage and frequency caused by power shortages.
The clean-rooms in Fab 4 adopted energy savings and environmentally friendly designs which reduce CO2 emissions by 56% and water consumption by 70% compared with the conventional clean-rooms, the company estimates.
Eli Harari, CEO and Chairman of SanDisk, said, "Completion of Fab 4 construction comes at the perfect time. We believe that Fab 4 will enable us to meet the growing demand for flash from our global customers in the years ahead."
Even though Fab 4 is the world’s largest flash fab in size, future demand surges that might surpass the partner’s total production capacity cannot be ruled out, said Shozo Saito, president and CEO of Toshiba's Semiconductor Company. "We need to make a decision by the end of our fiscal 2008 (March 2009) if we should give the green light to the Fab 5 construction plan, which would call for the plant to be operational at around the end of 2009," he said.
According to flash market research firm Web-Feet Research Inc. (Monterey, Calif.), the NAND flash memory market is expected to experience strong bit growth in the second half of 2007. Supply growth, due to capacity shifts from DRAM to NAND, and improving yields, will feed demand. However, the strong supply growth is forecast to push the market into an oversupply situation in the fourth quarter of 2007, extending to the first half of next year as the seasonal lull in demand takes effect. Overall bit growth for 2007 is forecast at 158% in 2007, the company said.
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