Elpida to Develop Advanced DRAMs With Taiwan Firm

Tokyo, Oct. 22 (Jiji Press)–Elpida Memory Inc. said Monday it has reached basic agreement to develop advanced dynamic random access memory chips jointly with Taiwanese semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corp.

The two companies will jointly develop new DRAMs based on so- called copper low-k technology, which uses copper to form conductive lines on silicon chips and low-dielectric constant films as insulating materials.

In many existing DRAMs, aluminum materials are used to form conductive lines.

Copper lines have lower electric-resistance than aluminum lines and are thus considered crucial to major improvements in DRAM performance.

But the use of copper lines is difficult because the lines require complicated manufacturing processes.

The Taiwanese firm uses copper low-k technology to manufacture logic chips. Under the agreement, UMC will license the technology to Elpida.

The two companies aim to use the technology for new DRAMs with line widths of 50 nanometers, two generations ahead of the current most-advanced DRAMs.

“This agreement with UMC is a significant step forward for future memory development, as copper low-k technology will help drive the production and continued process migration of high performance DRAMs,” Elpida Chief Technology Officer Takao Adachi said in a statement.

The two companies also agreed to codevelop phase-change random access memory chips, a form of nonvolative memory chips dubbed PRAM.

The Japanese and Taiwanese firms will work out further details and hope to finalize agreements by the end of this year.END

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