Micron to cut 2,000 more jobs

Micron to cut 2,000 more jobs

BOISE (Idaho) - JUST two months after saying more local job cuts weren't expected, computer chip maker Micron Technology Inc announced it will slash as many as 2,000 workers by the end of August and phase out certain manufacturing operations at its Boise, Idaho facility, amid the weak economy and lower demand for its DRAM memory chips.

The company said late on Monday it will end manufacturing of DRAMs on 200-millimetre wafers in Boise, cutting 500 jobs in the near term. The 200-millimetre wafers are being shelved in favour of 300-millimetre wafer plants, which are more cost-effective.

Micron makes DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, a type of memory chip that has suffered in the last two years from oversupply and pricing pressure on chips used in personal computers and the slumping automobile industry. Its rivals also are hurting. South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor has posted five consecutive quarterly losses, including nearly US$1 billion (S$1.5 billion) in the three months ending Dec 31, while German memory-chip maker Qimonda AG filed for bankruptcy protection in January.

Hynix has said DRAM prices dropped 43 per cent from the third quarter.

Micron's latest cuts come on top of a 15 percent companywide layoff announced last October, in which it eliminated about 3,000 of its 19,000 total positions. About 1,500 of those were in Boise, as it shut down the NAND flash memory plant it operated as part of a joint venture with Intel Corp.

Now, Micron will employ just over 5,000 people in the state, down from more than 10,000 two years ago. Once Idaho's largest private employer, it will trail St. Luke's hospitals and Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which have some 7,500 workers here.

The latest action will cost Micron about US$50 million, but is expected to generate annual cash savings of about US$150 million.

Micron plans to keep its 300mm research and development fabrication facility at its site in the desert near Boise, where it does product design and support, quality control and also has corporate and general services offices.

Spokesman Dan Francisco called those vital services for the company.

He said the 200mm wafer manufacturing facilities being shuttered will be kept in a 'warm-down state' and could eventually be used for additional, unspecified manufacturing activities. The company doesn't expects the moves will result in any disruption in product supply to customers.

'We remained hopeful that the demand for these products would stabilize in the marketplace and start to improve as we moved into the spring. Unfortunately, a better environment has not materialized, and we are at a point where we wanted to let our employees and the community know in advance what will occur later this summer,' said Steve Appleton, Micron chairman and chief executive, in a statement.

-- AP

- wong chee tat :)

IBM's Advanced Chip Fab Available for Hire

IBM's Advanced Chip Fab Available for Hire

Got a cutting edge chip and no one can manufacture it? IBM might have the solution for you with its 45nm foundry.

Maintaining a cutting edge semiconductor foundry is neither easy nor cheap; just ask AMD. The bulk of chip designers don't maintain their own foundries because they are so expensive to maintain and those factories have to be kept up to date or they fall into obsolescence very fast.

The result is most semiconductor firms don't maintain their own fabs, they farm the business out to third parties to do the manufacturing work. While some of these firms, like TSMC and UMC in Taiwan do an adequate job, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is considered the gold standard in chip manufacturing.

Well, IBM (NYSE: IBM) intends to change that by offering the first 45 nanometer (nm) Silicon on Insulator (SOI) foundry offering to anyone with a chip to make and sell. IBM claims that 45nm SOI chips will offer up to 30 percent performance improvement or 40 percent power reduction when compared to the industry-standard bulk complementary metal-oxide (CMOS) technology.

"45nm is our 6th generation of SOI technology and is a key driver in many collaborative designs with clients – including networking, storage, gaming and other consumer applications," said Mark Ireland, vice president of IBM Semiconductor Platforms in a statement. "Today's announcement is a progression of this deep experience, providing a world-class resource for the industry to build on this proven, next-generation technology."

IBM has a separate semiconductor alliance, consisting of AMD (NYSE: AMD), Toshiba, Chartered, Freescale, Infineon, Samsung and STMicroelectronics. The alliance is working on SOI technology for the 32nm process node and beyond for a 2010/2011 release.

This, however, is a leap forward, bringing 45nm, the cutting edge of manufacturing technology, to third parties. Up to now, it's been Intel's competitive advantage, and while this offering won't hurt Intel, it does flatten the playing field for competitors somewhat, according to one analyst.

A window of opportunity

"This would certainly narrow the barrier to entry," Dean McCarron, president of chip research firm Mercury Research told InternetNews.com. "Obviously it wouldn't eliminate it because you got to design the chip, and Intel will be moving to 32nm in the next year or so. So the window of opportunity to be directly competitive is relatively narrow."

As part of this news, ARM (NASDAQ: ARMH) announced the availability of its standard cell, memory and I/O libraries for the foundry. The ARM SOI library of physical IP provides the synthesis and implementation flows needed in the manufacturing of SOI-based chips.

McCarron said this is a "fairly cutting edge process" IBM is rolling out, and that would likely bring in business from chip vendors currently looking to other foundries for chip manufacturing. "What we typically see happen is there is a portion of the business that goes to whatever is the best process out there is. So there will be some jumping," he said.

- wong chee tat :)