Hitachi, NEC To Make Memory Chips

Tuesday, November 28th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

TOKYO (AP) â€” Electronics giants NEC Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. said Tuesday they will spend about $1.45 billion to build a new jointly-owned factory to produce computer memory chips.

The factory in Hiroshima will begin making next-generation dynamic random access memory chips, or DRAMs, starting in April 2002, they said.

The factory will be operated by Elpida Memory Inc., a joint venture between NEC and Hitachi that was established in December.

Elpida Memory President Kenji Tokuyama said the company will have the capacity to build 3,000 memory chips per month initially, rising to a maximum of 20,000, he said.

NEC and Hitachi want to increase their combined share of the worldwide DRAM market to 17 percent from 13 percent by 2004, Tokuyama said.

NEC is the world's second-largest semiconductor maker, behind Intel Corp. of the United States.