Toshiba is hastening to increase flash memory production at its mainstay Yokkaichi factory, aiming to address a shortage of large-capacity digital storage for data centers.

The Japanese conglomerate plans to order this fiscal year about 70 billion yen ($623 million) worth of chipmaking equipment, a purchase originally scheduled for the year ending March 2019, according to Wednesday's announcement. The equipment is for a fabrication facility under construction at the Mie Prefecture plant, in which Toshiba jointly invests with U.S. partner Western Digital.

Taking the lead on the investment is the Toshiba Memory unit, currently in the process of being sold to a multinational consortium. Toshiba said in August the memory arm would unilaterally pour an initial 195 billion yen into the so-called Fab 6 project because of conflict with its American partner. The Japanese company is "calling on Western Digital to participate" in the new round, said a Toshiba representative.

Fab 6 will be dedicated to producing high-volume 3D flash memory. The accelerated investment for the initial phase will go toward bringing in cutting-edge equipment for making chips with up to 96 vertically stacked layers of memory.

By: DocMemory
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