INDUSTRY NEWS

Samsung Boulevard

Going from cow pasture to production-level chipmaking in less than two years, Samsung Austin Semiconductor's new 64-Mb DRAM facility is scheduled to hit 12,000 wafer starts this month. The Korean chaebol's first U.S. semiconductor facility, located northeast of Austin, has a workforce of 900 and carries an initial price tag of $1.3 billion. About $900 million of that amount will be spent on equipment to outfit the Class 1, 125,000 sq ft wafer fab, according to spokesman Bill Cryer. To achieve such a fast production ramp-up, the Austin plant used what SAS president Sung Lee labels a “copy direct” method of transferring the actual process recipes and tool sets, with “minimal variation,” from Samsung's leading-edge Korean fab in Kihueng. Industry veteran Paul Lewis, director of the manufacturing department, calls the start-up his “most difficult in 20 years . . . we had to take it up a whole 'nother notch,” since they had to build both a new company and a new fab from the ground up. The next phase of development should begin later this year, although the company is experiencing a “small delay” in expansion plans caused in part by devaluations of the Korean won, explains Cryer.

Photo Courtesy of Samsung Austin Semiconductor

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