Taipei, Oct. 23, 2012 (CENS)--Inotera Memories Inc. recently announced its board of directors has approved a proposal to increase investment in 30nm process with the aim of migrating all of its monthly capacity of 120,000 wafers to the advanced process in the middle of next year.
Industry executives estimated the investment at around NT$10 billion (US$333 million at US$1:NT$30), suggesting support of the Formosa Plastics Group for its DRAM (dynamic random access memory) business. Inotera is a DRAM maker mostly held by the group.
Inotera President Charles Kao pointed out that the group has lent its full support to Inotera, which will shift the rest of its 120,000-wafer output capacity to 30nm process after having migrated 50,000 wafers to the process.
Kao stressed the investment addresses process upgrade instead of capacity expansion. Industry executives estimated the investment will begin sometime next year.
While Inotera has gained approval from its board of directors on 30nm process investment, its DRAM affiliate, Nanya Technology Corp., is starting pilot production of the process technology.
So far, chips for servers and low-power memory chips for handheld devices have constituted over 20% and 10-15% of Inotera’s product lineup.
Nanya is phasing out of production of commodity DRAM chips to focus on niche memory chips. The company will not spend much capital on R&D projects when shifting product focus. The company has begun developing 20nm process technology for niche products.
Nanya, Inotera and Their Product & Process Planning
Stock code Company Planning
2408 Nanya Phasing out of commodity memory to focus on niche memory;
30nm process in pilot run
3474 Inotera Focusing on standard memory for severs;
50,000 wafers in 30nm production, all 120,000 wafers set to migrate to 30nm production in the middle of 2013
Sources: the companies
(by Ken Liu)
