Israel-based Tower Semiconductor announced that it has received a volume production order for its new manufacturing facility, Fab 2. SanDisk Corporation will have its advanced memory card controller manufactured in Fab 2. Tower expects to begin commercial shipments of SanDisk's product in mid-2003.
"The SanDisk order is consistent with our Fab 2 production ramp-up plans for our 0.18-micron industry-standard logic process," said Harold Blomquist, senior vice president of Tower Semiconductor Ltd. and chief executive officer of Tower Semiconductor USA.
"The high-volume opportunity for a substantial portion of SanDisk's current and future controller-wafer foundry business brings us closer to achieving our goal of ramping Fab 2 to full production this year. We are extremely pleased by this vote of confidence from SanDisk."
The memory card controller that SanDisk will have manufactured in Fab 2 was developed by SanDisk's Israel Design Center and will be used in a number of high-volume card applications, including digital cameras and camcorders and multimedia mobile phones.
Tower completed the product's prototyping in four weeks from tape-out to shipment. SanDisk cards incorporating the Tower-produced controllers are expected to start shipping in high volumes in the third quarter of 2003.
As one of Tower's four wafer partners, SanDisk invested $75 million in Tower for Fab 2's construction. SanDisk is an international supplier of flash data storage products used in consumer, OEM and industrial markets.
SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, California.
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. is a pure-play independent wafer foundry established in 1993. The company manufactures integrated circuits with geometries ranging from 1.0 to 0.18 microns; it also provides complementary manufacturing services and design support. In addition to digital CMOS process technology, Tower offers advanced non-volatile memory solutions, mixed-signal and CMOS image-sensor technologies. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
