TOKYO -- NEC Corp. will start producing 128-megabit DRAMs at its fab in Shanghai, China, later this year, making it the most advanced chip produced in that country, company officials said here today.
NEC's joint-venture operation, called NEC Hua Hong SemiconductorCorp., will be upgraded to 0.25-micron processing equipment from 0.35 micron, enabling the plant to produce the 128-Mbit memory chips, said Kenshi Shimakura, associate senior vice president at NEC.
The upgrade will mark the first time design rules have reached this level in China, he said, adding that NEC will install first deep-ultraviolet stepper in China at the Shanghai fab.
In an interview at NEC headquarters, Shimakura said his company has
received permission from the Japanese government to bring the Shanghai fab to the 0.25-micron process. Such capability has previously been restricted under export controls.
U.S. export controls currently has kept Motorola Inc. from equipping its fab in Tianjin, China, with 0.25-micron process equipment. Japan, however, is largely free to approve the export of advanced semiconductor equipment, since a global system of controls called CoCom (Coordinating Committee on Export Controls) folded several years ago.
NEC Hua Hong Semiconductor has been producing 64-Mbit DRAMs at 0.35-micron since opening last year. All of the DRAMs are exported back to Japan, Shimakura said.
He added that the Shanghai fab will double its capacity this year, to
20,000 wafers per month from the current level of 10,000 wafer starts a month. DRAMs will comprise 16,000 wafers a month at the new peak, with 4,000 wafer starts devoted to logic chips for handheld cell phones and PDAs.
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