Tokyo--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it would meet fast growing demand for NAND flash memory by raising its fiscal year 2005 capital expenditure in semiconductors by 63 billion yen. The additional investment will increase Toshiba's total semiconductor capex in FY2005 to 289 billion yen, against the forecast of 225 billion yen announced in October last year. The revised figure represents the largest investment the company has directed toward the semiconductor business in a single fiscal year.

Most of the newly announced funding will be channeled into expanding capacity at the state-of-the-art 300-millimeter (mm) wafer facility at Toshiba's Yokkaichi Operations, which started to mass produce NAND flash memory in July last year. The latest expansion will boost capacity to 70,000 wafers a month by the end of the second half of FY2006, against an original target of 48,750 wafers a month.

Toshiba supports its semiconductor business with consistent development of advanced process technologies. Industry-leading 70-nanometer (nm) process technologies are already in use at Yokkaichi's 200mm-wafer fab, and will be deployed in the 300mm-wafer fab during the course of this month. The 300mm fab is also slated to transition to 52nm process technology in the second half of FY2006.

The NAND flash memory market is growing fast on increased demand for mobile phones, USB memory, MP3 music players, digital cameras and memory cards. The market is shifting to higher-density NAND memory, able to store information-rich image and music data. Toshiba will meet this growing demand with proactive investments in production capacity, by promoting development of advanced process technologies, and by continuing to lead the industry in multi-level cell technologies.

The production equipment for Yokkaichi's 300mm-wafer fab will be installed as a manufacturing facility for Flash Partners, Ltd., a joint venture between Toshiba and SanDisk Corporation.