Elpida Memory and Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. opened the first 300-mm fab operated by their joint venture, Rexchip Electronics, on 12 October 2007. The fab was at the Central Taiwan Science Park’s Houli site and was built to manufacture DRAM.
When and where did the fab open?
Rexchip held its grand opening on 12 October 2007 at the Houli site in Taiwan’s Central Taiwan Science Park. Rexchip was the joint venture of Japan’s Elpida Memory and Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. (PSC). Contemporary reports describe it as the venture’s first 300-mm fab.
What did the Houli fab make?
At opening, Rexchip said the fab was running a 70-nm process and had installed capacity for 30,000 300-mm wafers. It planned to begin volume shipments of 1Gbit DDR2 DRAM to Powerchip and Elpida in the fourth quarter of 2007. Those figures describe the fab and its announced production plans in 2007, not current operating capacity or product availability. EE Times
What that means for DDR2 RAM modules
The announcement concerned DRAM chips, not finished consumer RAM modules. A 1Gbit DDR2 chip could be used as a component in memory products, but the report does not identify a particular module, computer, or retail product. DDR2 is a legacy memory generation; a module must match the memory type and supported specifications of its motherboard or system. The 2007 opening announcement is not evidence that compatible modules remain available from Rexchip today.
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How large was the joint venture?
The project’s scale needs to be read in two ways: what Rexchip had invested and staffed by the opening, and what the partners planned for a larger build-out.
| Measure | Reported figure | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Installed capacity at opening | 30,000 300-mm wafers | Rexchip’s reported fab capacity in 2007; the announcement does not specify a monthly period in the cited account. EE Times |
| Employees at opening | More than 1,800 | Rexchip workforce at the Houli site in 2007. EE Times |
| Investment at Houli by opening | More than $1.8 billion | Investment reported for the site by the 2007 opening. EE Times |
| Longer-term construction plan | Four 300-mm fabs; 240,000 12-inch wafers per month; more than 5,000 jobs | Planned combined scale, not the opening-day capacity or workforce. The 240,000-wafer monthly figure was reported in 2006; the job target was reported in 2007. DigiTimes EE Times |
| Planned venture investment | About $13.7 billion | A reported plan for the venture, not the amount already invested at Houli by the opening. EE Times |
Why did Elpida and Powerchip form Rexchip?
The partners announced the venture in December 2006 as a way to expand commodity-PC DRAM manufacturing. The four-fab plan framed the Houli opening as the beginning of a much larger manufacturing base rather than a report that all planned facilities or capacity were already operating. DigiTimes
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At the opening, Elpida president and CEO Yukio Sakamoto described Rexchip’s 70-nm technology as “the most advanced” and said it could create “what could be the largest and lowest-cost 300mm DRAM fabrication base.” Those were the executive’s claims about the project’s potential, not independently measured comparisons. PSC chairman and Rexchip chairman Frank Huang said the joint venture began operations less than a year after groundbreaking. EE Times
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