INDUSTRY NEWS

STORIED: NEC's new ISI fab has a 29,700-sq-ft cleanroom on its second and third floors. The factory will make 0.13-um chips on 8-in. wafers.

NEC says Internet advances led chipmaker to build 'world's most-advanced' LSI fab

Racing to keep up with the rapid spread of Internet-based technology, NEC has opened a Japanese fab that the chipmaker calls the world's most-advanced LSI plant. Fab 5, a 69,300-sq-ft plant at Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture, will produce 0.13-µm semiconductors on 8-in. wafers. NEC says it plans to immediately introduce copper processes at the fab, which will have an initial production capacity of 6000 wafers per month.

The three-story fab has a 29,700-sq-ft cleanroom on the second and third floors of the building. As part of its aggressive effort to begin production quickly, NEC claims it built the LSI plant in half the time normally required to construct a mass-production fab with "conventional" methods. NEC engineers and equipment suppliers worked 24-hour-a-day cycles to meet the short deadline on the project, the chipmaker points out.

The manufacturer hopes to reduce production lead times by using "accelerated" management and wafer transportation systems. NEC also plans to institute an environmentally friendly manufacturing policy that includes the use of energy cogeneration and zero-emission methods in order to achieve what it calls "eco factory status."

NEC spent approximately $722 million to build Fab 5. It will invest an additional sum of approximately $800 million to produce copper-based ICs and install 0.10-µm-compatible process equipment in a 16,500-sq-ft section of the cleanroom. The chipmaker is taking these steps to meet anticipated demand by raising its total capacity at the site to 20,000 wafers per month by 2002.

Rapid expansion of Internet-related services and products drove the manufacturer's decision to rush the fab construction schedule, NEC says. Digital broadcasting, mobile communications, and home networks are among the advances requiring "higher computing performance and greater cost effectiveness from system LSIs."