1998-11-18 , ESC-9883
Business News From Philips Semiconductors

First worldwide production of six inch diameter wafers for discrete semiconductors

Philips Semiconductors announced today the opening of the world's first plant to manufacture six inch (150mm) wafers for the production of small signal discrete semiconductors. The facility enables the production of twice as many chips on a wafer, compared to the current four inch standard wafer used for discretes. The production facility in Hamburg, Germany, is a result of a US$ 30 million investment by Philips Semiconductors.

"This investment in our Hamburg fab supports our objective, to become the world leader in discrete manufacturing", said Leon Husson, Philips Semiconductors' managing director of discrete semiconductors. The expansion of the Hamburg facility is a core part of Philips Semiconductors' on-going investment programme to maintain its position as a leading supplier of discrete semiconductors. The announcement comes just four months after the company invested US$ 106 million to open its new PowerFab 2 facility in Hazel Grove, England, which is one of the most advanced power discrete fabs in the world.

This investment is the latest step in an ongoing investment programme by Philips Semiconductors to grow its position in the worldwide discretes market. The latest Dataquest figures for 1997 position Philips Semiconductors as number three in discretes world-wide, number one in Europe, number two in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) and number three in the USA.

Discrete semiconductors are electronic components such as transistors, diodes and sensors which are used in entertainment electronics, the communications and automotive industries, multimedia and in a variety of industrial applications.

Philips' plant in Hamburg was opened in 1927 and produces around 300 million chips and several thousand million discrete semiconductors each year. In line with state-of-the-art semiconductor processing, the new production line has also been designed with resource-saving and environmentally-friendly considerations in mind.

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the ninth largest semiconductor supplier in the world. Discrete semiconductors are central to the company's operations and it is the third largest discretes supplier in the world, with the target of becoming the world's largest. It has a very broad and deep product range grouped into three specific competences: Power, RF and General Application products which cover all application areas. Philips Semiconductors is supported by a worldwide network of systems laboratories and product application groups to develop complete, dedicated solutions to specific customer requirements.

Philips Semiconductors produced over 15 billion discretes in 1997 and has over 10,000 different products in production for RF, Power and General Applications. In addition, it produces the world's smallest SMD packages for discretes (down to 1.5mm x 0.75mm).