Sony to invest in Toshiba, IBM chip plants

TOKYO - Sony Corp announced on Monday that it plans to build new lines at Toshiba Corp and IBM Corp factories to produce advanced microprocessors for use in such products as digital appliances and game machines including Microsoft's Xbox gaming console and Sony's PlayStation 3. 

The company is jointly developing new types of microprocessors with the two companies, and through the investments, Sony aims to ensure a stable supply of advanced semiconductors for use in strategic products.

The firm will invest 42 billion yen (US$398 million) by fiscal 2004 in Toshiba's Oita plant and has earmarked 36 billion yen for an IBM facility in East Fishkill, New York. The investments will be used to build lines that can accommodate 300 millimeter wafers with a 65-nanometer design rule.

The nanometer measurement refers to the smallest track or gap width on a chip's surface. Sixty-five nanometers is about a thousandth the width of a human hair and about half the width that most of the world's advanced semiconductor plants are capable of at present.

Sony and Toshiba will invest 50/50 in the Oita plant. The lines there are slated to go into operation in the first half of 2005, and all of the chips produced on them will be supplied to the Sony group.

In fiscal 2004, Sony aims to invest 53 billion yen in a plant in Isahaya, Nagasaki prefecture, that is owned by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

The three locations will have a combined monthly production capacity of 15,000 wafers.

(Asia Pulse/Nikkei)