Taiwan's Winbond Electronics has gained board approval for a $1.47 billion (49 billion Taiwanese dollars), 12-inch fab.

The memory maker plans to break ground in Q3 at Taichun Science-based Industrial Park, with installment of clean rooms and equipments in the early 2005.

By Q4 2005, the 300mm fab is expected to move on to the pilot-run phase using 0.11-micron technology. The estimated manufacturing capacity is 24,000 pieces of wafers per month, with the flexibility to upgrade to 48,000 pieces per month in the first stage.

Investment may come from internal funding, as well as loans in the first stage, Winbond said.