The new 52,000m square meter, 3-story ferro-concrete facility houses a class-10 clean room (where any one cubic foot of air contains less than 10 specks of dust with a diameter of more than 0.1 micron). The manufacturing process will use 8-inch wafers for the DRAM substrate and will support 0.5 micron process technology.

In October this year, the new facility is scheduled to produce 16M DRAMs, at a monthly volume of 400,000 units. Once it reaches full capacity, production will rise to 3 million chips a month.

Commenting on the completion, Masanobu Ohyama, Senior Vice President and Group Executive of Toshiba's Semiconductor Group said, "We are delighted, both by the fact that the construction has gone so well and that the long-established cooperation between Toshiba and Motorola continues to grow and flourish. Completion of TSC's new facility will greatly contribute to meeting the growing demand for 16M DRAMs, and complement production of memories at Toshiba's 16M DRAM production facilities at Oita and Yokkaichi."

Murrey Goldman, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Manager of Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector noted, "Tohoku is a great model of success in leading technology areas. It has demonstrated a synergy that reaches beyond its two parents and we look forward to continued greatness from its efforts."

Established in 1987 as a joint venture between Toshiba and Motorola, TSC started production in May 1988, in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan. It now has a monthly production capacity of 9 million DRAMs and microprocessors (MPUs), including 1 and 4M DRAMs and 8-, 16-, and 32-bit MPUs. Last October, the company started construction of a new facility for metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) logic ICs. This will be completed in September 1995, with a total investment of approximately 27 billion yen.

Worldwide demand for DRAMs is expected to continue to show strong growth, with a powerful impetus coming from the increasing size and capabilities of operating-system and application software and the development of memory-hungry multimedia products and systems. Demand for 16M DRAMs is estimated at 300 million chips in 1995, rising to 700 million in 1996.

Since its establishment in 1987, TSC has developed close links with the Sendai community. In celebration of the company's 7th anniversary, Toshiba and Motorola will make a donation of 10 million yen to the Foundation for the Promotion of Electrical Communication Engineering, headed by Dr. Tasuku Takagi, Professor of Tohoku University. The fund will be utilized as grant aid to support promising electrical engineering students who aim at doctorate.

 

Outline of Tohoku Semiconductor Corp. 

Established:             May, 1987 
Production Start:        May, 1988 
Capital:                 5 billion yen 
Location:                3-3-1 Akedori, Izumi-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 
                         Prefecture, Japan 
President:               Hidenori Kajiyama 
Site area:               Approximately 136,000 square meters 
Building area:           Approximately 77,000 square meters 
Employees:               Approximately 1,500 
Main products:           1M and 4M DRAMs; 256K SRAMs 
                         8-, 16- and 32-bit microprocessors 
Production capacity:     9 million chips a month 



Contact:  Shigehiro Hayashi, Senior Manager 
          Administrations Division 
          Tohoku Semiconductor Corporation 
          Tel: (022) 378-8000 

          Tetsuo Kadoya, Manager 
          Public Communications Office 
          Toshiba Corporation 
          Tel: (03) 3457-2105 

          Shinji Kimura, Manager, Public Relations 
          Planning & Coordination Office 
          Nippon Motorola Ltd. 
          Tel: (03) 3280-8674