DRAM vendor ProMOS Technologies announced that its third 300mm facility (Fab 4), which will be built in Daya Township, Taichung County, will mainly operate as a DRAM fab, but the company does not reject the idea to allocate some capacity there for manufacturing NAND flash memory chips. This Wednesday, ProMOS held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new fab, which is expected to deploy 60nm stack technology in mass production by the second half of 2008, according to company chairman and president ML Chen.
The 60nm process will be another part of its long-term strategic partnership with Korea-based Hynix Semiconductor, ProMOS said. The company will construct Fab 4 in close proximity to its existing 300mm facility (Fab 3) in the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP), which was officially opened in November 2005. Following the Fab 3, the new plant will also have 193nm lithography tools supplied by Netherlands-based ASML, according to ProMOS. In addition to 193nm lithography processes, Fab 4 will also utilize 248nm lithography tools, the company said. As previously reported, Fab 4 will commence mass production in the end 2007, using 70nm stack technology. Clean rooms are expected to be ready in mid-2007, according to ProMOS. Then, in the third quarter, the company will move in equipment at the facility. ProMOS is aiming for a monthly capacity of 10,000 wafer starts by December 2007. Later, it will ramp up to 40,000 wafer starts per month.
In September, ProMOS will begin deploying 70nm stack technology at Fab 3, with mass production scheduled to commence by the second quarter of 2007, Chen said. This fab currently has a monthly capacity of 30,000 wafer starts, and the DDR2-to-DDR ratio is 2:1, excluding chips produced for Hynix, according to ProMOS. The DDR portion of the company's DRAM output is slowly decreasing, ProMOS said, adding that it expects an uptick in DDR2 demand in the spot market to start from mid-August. Last year, ProMOS allocated about one third of its DRAM output to the spot market and two thirds to OEM contracts, according to the company. This year, the ratio changed to 50:50, but ProMOS hopes that last year's breakdown will return in 2007.
ProMOS also confirmed it has started trial production of 1Gbit NAND flash memory chips under 0.13-micron process at its 200mm facility (Fab 1) in Hsinchu, relying on its own technology developments. This year, ProMOS received several patents for its flash memory designs. According to ProMOS, its engineers originally worked on NOR flash memory designs, but later on, the project was switched to NAND architecture due to unclear market prospects for NOR products. ProMOS currently does not plan mass production for 0.13-micron NAND flash memory chips to begin before the first half of 2007. In the near future, the company plans to study market opportunities and its own abilities to produce flash memory. As for the Hsinchu 200mm facility, the company plans to upgrade it to a 300mm fab that has a monthly capacity of 30,000 wafer starts.
Membership in the DDR3 club is not that important for ProMOS at the moment, and its DDR3 samples are now targeted to be available in the first half of 2007, the company indicated. ProMOS said it plans to manufacture DDR3 chips, using its own 95nm and 85nm trench technology processes at the 300mm Fab 2 plant in Hsinchu, and mass production is scheduled to start at the end of 2007 or early 2008. The trench technology was received from Germany-based Infineon Technologies, and ProMOS has been internally developing it since the two companies stopped their partnership. Regarding usage of stack technology to produce DDR3 DRAM, ProMOS said this topic has not yet been discussed within its alliance with Hynix. The Korean company showcased its early DDR3 module prototypes in August 2005 at the IDF (Intel Developer Forum) in San Francisco.
In related news, investment analysts from Goldman Sachs and Fubon Securities maintained their "Buy" recommendations for ProMOS, pointing out that the company reported strong revenue growths in the last three months. ProMOS is now expected to continue this trend in the remaining two quarters of 2006, leveraging its success in deploying 90nm DRAM manufacturing technology, according to analysts. However, as opposed to that, another equity research firm, Nomura, recently reiterated the "Neutral" call for ProMOS, suggesting that the company will not generate economic value in the period from 2006 to 2008.
ProMOS chairman and president ML Chen: "The total capacity of our 300mm fabs is expected to reach 140,000 wafer starts per month in the next few years."
Photo: Vyacheslav Sobolev, DigiTimes.com
Article edited by Michael McManus
