Through its partnership with the Hubei provincial government on construction of a 12-inch fab in Wuhan, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) plans to produce NAND flash at the fab with an initial monthly capacity of 100,000 wafers, once the fab comes online in 2008, industry sources stated.

Although SMIC company officials stressed that this new Wuhan fab is not owned but only managed by SMIC, industry players generally expect that the pure-play foundry will take over the fab's operation after a period of time. According to an SMIC announcement, the fab will initially house a monthly capacity of 12,500 wafers, which will increase to 20,000-25,000 wafers in 2009. Commercial production is slated in the first half of 2008.

The Hubei provincial government plans to boost the monthly capacity to 160,000 wafers at the fab with 100,000 wafers of that capacity being allotted for NAND flash production while the remainder is used for logic IC production, the sources said.

In addition to the Wuhan fab, SMIC will produce NAND at its scheduled Shanghai and Chengdu fabs, the sources indicated. The produced NAND flash chips will be packed at AT2, the joint-venture backend production fab the foundry has with United Test & Assembly Center (UTAC), the sources added.

Although it already has a technology alliance with Israel-based Saifun Semiconductor on NROM-made NAND flash production, SMIC is looking for a technology alliance with Toshiba sources stated, while officials from SMIC declined to comment on speculation.

President and CEO of SMIC Richard Chang mentioned that the company will have 4Gbit multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash available on 90nm node this year.

By: DocMemory
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