Toshiba, SanDisk Partner On NAND Flash

Toshiba Corporation and SanDisk have teamed on a joint NAND flash memory production venture and will build a new 300-millimeter wafer fab in Japan. The companies plan to start construction of the fab in 2009, with production set to begin in 2010. Fifty percent of the new fab’s production capacity will be part of the new joint venture, with the companies sharing wafer output and funding for the equipment. Toshiba will manage the remaining 50 percent, and will provide half of the output to SanDisk as its foundry. "We are very pleased with the financing structure in the new agreement which maintains our guaranteed 50 percent of the capacity output while reducing substantially our capital expenditure commitments for funding the new fab NAND manufacturing equipment," Eli Harari, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SanDisk, said in a statement. NAND flash memory has become the storage technology of choice for a growing number of consumer and computing devices.