Posted on Wednesday, December 17 2008 @ 0:02 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
SanDisk and Toshiba
have decided to cut NAND flash memory production due to the economic downturn. The firms plan a short halt in production in two fabs, and a 30 percent cut in early 2009 to address oversupply in the market.
Today two of the largest and most stable firms in the semiconductor industry -- SanDisk and Toshiba -- announced that they would stop production in two fabs for a period and then restart at lower outputs. The two firms say that their joint production facilities including Fab 3 and Fab 4 will be temporarily halted from December 31 to January 12.
After the short halt in production, the NAND makers say that production will begin again at roughly 70% of the current production capacity. SanDisk admits that the reduction in capacity will drive wafer costs up due to underutilized capacity.
