New developing technologies in the works have prompted Micron Technology to plan a major increase in cleanroom space. New cleanrooms for next-generation memory chips were discussed at the Q3 earnings conference call with investors and financial analysts.
The US company talked about expanding its production capacities, but as a bid to produce next-gen memories for next-gen applications.
“We are confident that the long-term demand outlook for memory and storage is compelling, driven by broad secular trends such as AI, autonomous vehicles, 5G, and IoT,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron.
To this end, the US company broke ground on a new cleanroom at its campus near Taichung, Taiwan, back in April. Now Micron has announced it will spend US$2 billion on a new cleanroom at its campus near Hiroshima, Japan for DRAMs.
Extreme UV lithography (EUV) is one popular new technology in the semiconductor spectrum, but it is unknown whether these cleanrooms will be EUV ready.
With the oversupply of dynamic random-access memory (DRAMs) on the market lately, the company emphasised that facility expansions were more linked to technology transitions than current generation manufacturing capacity.