Singapore joint venture foundry to spend $250mn
The company’s original planned capacity was 30,000 wafers per month. The investment will mainly involve equipment purchases, with some infrastructure upgrades that will enable a long-term capacity expansion of up to 40,000 wafers per month.
SSMC is a joint venture between Philips Semiconductors, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and the Economic Development Board (EDB) of Singapore. The present manufacturing capacity of 24,000 wafers per month is fully booked and the fab currently enjoys a 95-100% utilisation rate.
Ajit Manocha, Philips Semiconductors senior vice-president, comments: "SSMC has made significant progress in the semiconductor market since its inception in 1998. It has constantly challenged itself to set new benchmarks in the industry with the latest being the introduction of embedded Flash technologies. Since the initial mass production in 0.25micron, SSMC is now moving on to 0.14micron technology, which is targeted for mass production in 2004."
