Investment & expansion
Samsung's three-year, $500mn investment plan, started in 2003, will upgrade, expand, and increase capacity to produce nano-scale semiconductor memory technology at the plant. The investments will enable 0.1micron geometry designs down to 0.08microns at a capacity of 50,000 wafers per month for manufacturing giga-density DRAM devices. Currently, the Austin plant manufactures several types of memory chips including 16, 64 and 256Mbit chips in the 0.123micron feature size. The northeastern Austin plant has about 970 employees. Samsung plans to increase employment by 300 people at the facility over the three-year term. Samsung Austin Semiconductor, established in 1996 is Samsung's only semiconductor fabrication plant outside of Korea.
Elpida Memory will begin mass production of DDR2 SDRAM using advanced 0.10micron process technology in August 2004. The first products slated for manufacturing using 0.10micron process technology include high-performance, high-density DRAM products such as DDR2-533 and DDR2-667. Elpida plans to increase production capacity of 0.10micron based products to more than 50% of their 300mm wafer line capacity by January 2005.
Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) has filed a registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relating to a proposed initial public offering of its common stock.
