SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY
UPDATE
August / September
2018
McIlvaine Company
Micron Constructing New Cleanroom for 3D NAND Fabrication R&D in Singapore
Micron
Technologies recently began construction on a multi-billion-dollar cleanroom
facility for research and development of its 3D NAND technologies. The new
facility is being built adjacent to Micron’s existing NAND fabrication complex
at 1 North Coast Drive where Micron invested $4 Billion to expand in 2016.
Micron did not disclose its exact investment in the new cleanroom space except
to say that it was a multi-billion-dollar project.
Micron’s
expanded 300mm 3D NAND manufacturing complex is part of its NAND Center of
Excellence, and the new facility that is under construction will expand the
company’s ability to increase its research and development efforts and allow
Micron to push “even more intricate designs” according to Sanjay Mehrotra
(Micron President and CEO). for its 3D flash memory. The new facility will be
staffed by the new hires which will mainly be engineers and technicians
specializing in 3D NAND manufacturing and will include as many as 600 fresh
graduates.
Construction of
the new manufacturing and cleanroom space is slated for completion in mid-2019
with initial wafer output by the fourth quarter of next year. Unfortunately,
this facility is not intended to add additional wafer capacity (at least at this
time) so those hoping for increased supply of NAND chips and cheaper SSDs will
have to keep waiting. Rather, this facility is going to be used for R&D and its
manufacturing will be used to produce more advanced flash and experiment with
new manufacturing methods for increasingly complicated stacked and denser die
designs instead of beefing up supply of its current memory chips that are being
used in current products.
Along with the
new 3D NAND facility, Micron will be adding 1,000 new jobs to its existing
workforce in Singapore of 7,500 over the next five years per a deal with
Singapore’s Economic Development Board. Business Times and Channel News Asia
note that over the past 20 years Micron has invested heavily in Singapore –
north of $20 billion.
Micron is
pushing forward with its 3D NAND especially following the breakup with Intel
wherein the two companies have decided to complete the development of third
generation 3D NAND together and then to develop 3D NAND independently.
Interestingly, Intel and Micron did not totally dissolve the IMFT joint venture
as they will continue collaborating on 3D XPoint at the fab in Lehi, Utah which
according to Intel is now entirely focused on XPoint memory. That press release
notes that Intel and Micron are currently producing second generation 64-layer
IMFT flash and developing higher density third generation flash which is slated
for production next year (after which Micron and Intel will go their separate
ways on NAND), so this may be a major reason for Micron building out new
multi-billion-dollar fab space for NAND R&D.
McIlvaine Company
Northfield, IL 60093-2743
Tel:
847-784-0012; Fax:
847-784-0061
E-mail:
editor@mcilvainecompany.com
Web site:
www.mcilvainecompany.com