Spansion’s flash fab ramping up
The flash memory company’s first fab is reducing the cost of flash chips by about 30%
By James Carbone -- Purchasing, 3/7/2008 3:27:00 PM
Spansion says it has reached level of more than 25,000 wafer-starts per quarter at its Spansion 1 (SP1) facility in Japan, the world's first 300mm, 65nm flash memory manufacturing fab.
A number of Spansion's top customers are in the process of qualifying products at SP1, including leading-edge 65nm products, such as MirrorBit Eclipse devices.
"This is a significant milestone for the flash memory industry and we expect it will provide important benefits for our overall business," says Bertrand Cambou, president and CEO, Spansion. “We expect that this production ramp should rapidly reduce our reliance on external foundries and older technology nodes, giving Spansion greater capacity.”
Spansion is the first company to produce next-generation NOR Flash memory technology on 300mm wafers. A 300mm fab usually gives about a 30% cost reduction over 200mm, according to Jim Handy, a principal analyst with researcher Objective Analysis.
"Ramping production at SP1 is tremendously important because it enables Spansion to produce MirrorBit wafer products with a lower cost structure, which in turn makes it a more efficient competitor," says Handy.
MirrorBit technology offers higher yields and scales more easily to higher densities than the traditional floating-gate NOR technology, according to Spansion.
SP1 is co-located with Spansion's other fab in Aizu, Japan.
Also see:
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