Soitec ramping up 300-mm wafer production for PS3 and others

[McFly]

http://www.eet.com/semi/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=50500786

BERNIN, France — Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer manufacturer Soitec SA is quickly ramping production volume for 300-mm diameter wafers and is looking to open another manufacturing plant, according to company president and chief executive officer Andre-Jacques Auberton-Herve.

"By April, we will have doubled our output to 20,000 300-mm wafers per month," Auberton-Herve said. "After that, we anticipate doubling the output again."

Auberton-Herve said the second doubling in capacity would fully utilize the existing class-1 fab here. Hence, the company is performing site evaluation for another large wafer manufacturing facility.

April 2005 ... maybe we see an end of 2005 PS3 release date? If not, early 2006 seems to be very realistic after all the latest news.

Fredi

 

[one]

Re: Soitec ramping up 300-mm wafer production for PS3 and ot

http://www.eet.com/semi/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=50500786

BERNIN, France — Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer manufacturer Soitec SA is quickly ramping production volume for 300-mm diameter wafers and is looking to open another manufacturing plant, according to company president and chief executive officer Andre-Jacques Auberton-Herve.

"By April, we will have doubled our output to 20,000 300-mm wafers per month," Auberton-Herve said. "After that, we anticipate doubling the output again."

Auberton-Herve said the second doubling in capacity would fully utilize the existing class-1 fab here. Hence, the company is performing site evaluation for another large wafer manufacturing facility.

April 2005 ... maybe we see an end of 2005 PS3 release date? If not, early 2006 seems to be very realistic after all the latest news.

Not sure April 2005 wafers are for PS3 though. It may be for a dual-core Opteron or a new PowerPC 970 series or a Xenon's CPU.

 

[cthellis42]

Do the, uh, state what processes account for what percentage of the 300mm wafers?

 

[DEO3]

It was my understanding that XBox 2 would be coming out Nov '05, with the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution coming out a year after that. The reason the XBox 3 coming out earlier than Sony's and Nintendo's offerings is believe to be that Microsoft isn't making any money with their current generation product and would like to jump start the next generation as soon as possible.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I can't wait for Xbox 3
...man it's gonna crush the wimpy old PS3 and Revolution

 

[London Geezer]

Do the, uh, state what processes account for what percentage of the 300mm wafers?

Que'?!