Toshiba and Western Digital open New Fab 2 in Japan

Source: Toshiba. The clean room of New Fab 2, Yokkaichi operations in Japan.

Toshiba and Western Digital have opened the 27,600 sq m New Fab 2 semiconductor fabrication facility in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, Japan.  The New Fab 2 facility will support the conversion of the companies’ 2D NAND* capacity to 3D flash memory, supporting the growing global demand for flash memory in smartphones, solid state drives and other applications.

Construction of New Fab 2 began in September 2014. Following partial completion of the facility in October 2015, Toshiba and SanDisk - a flash memory specialist acquired in May 2016 by Western Digital as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation - worked together to implement manufacturing capabilities for mass production of 3D flash memory. First-phase production started in March of this year. The parties intend to further invest to expand production capacity over time, depending on market conditions.

Yokkaichi operations will leverage big data analytics on a site-wide integrated production system to analyse over 1.6 billion data points each day to further improve manufacturing efficiency and the quality of 3D flash memory.

Satoshi Tsunakawa, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation, said, “Advanced technologies underline our commitment to respond to continued demand as an innovator in flash memory. We are enhancing manufacturing efficiency and the quality of our world-class facility. Building on that, we also plan investments of as much as 860 billion yen by FY2018, in line with market situation. Our commitment is firm, and we are confident that our joint venture with Western Digital will produce cost competitive next generation memories at Yokkaichi.”

Steve Milligan, Chief Executive Officer of Western Digital, said, “As a leader in non-volatile memory products and solutions, we are excited to be entering the 3D NAND era with our partner Toshiba. The New Fab 2 enables us to begin the conversion of our existing 2D NAND capacity to 3D NAND and continues our long-standing presence in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, and Japan.”

*NAND (not and) chips produce a signal on its output channel until there are signals on all of its input channels. For example, a NAND circuit with three inputs could have each input connected to a door as part of a security system. If all three doors remain closed, signals are sent to the NAND circuit inputs, and the chip would produce an "all's well" signal as the output. If any door is opened, however, "all's well" signal is cut off and and an alarm is triggered in the security system.