Micron to invest £3.7bn in Japan’s EUV tech for advanced chip production
Micron Technology revealed planned yesterday to invest up to 500 billion yen (US$3.7 billion) in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology in the coming years, supported by the Japanese government. The advanced EUV lithography chip-making machines will be utilised to manufacture 1-gamma chips, which are essential for the mass production of materials used in complex applications such as image processing networks.
The semiconductor firm will become the first to introduce EUV technology to Japan for production purposes. Micron anticipates ramping up EUV production on the 1-gamma node in Taiwan and Japan from 2025 onwards. This news follows the US memory chip maker’s initiation of mass production of its high-capacity, low-power 1-beta dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips at its Hiroshima facility last year. DRAM chips are a type of memory chip that loses memory when power is disconnected.
Japan is working to revitalise its chip sector, as its global market share has dropped to approximately 10% from around 50% in the late 1980s. Meanwhile, the United States is increasingly encouraging its allies to collaborate in order to counter China’s advancements in chip and advanced technology development, reports Channel News Asia.
