Toshiba to Invest in New Taiwanese Company to Assemble Memory Devices

17 June, 1998


Tokyo--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it will take a major stake in a new Walsin Lihwa Group company that will be established on July 1 to assemble state-of-the-art 64 megabit DRAM and other memory devices.

The new company, Walton Advanced Electronics Ltd. (WAE) will have an initial paid-in capital of US$80 million and will be established in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. WAE will have four investors: Walsin Advanced Electronics Ltd. and Winbond Electronics Corp. (75% stake) of Taiwan; and Toshiba Corp. (19.9%) and Mitsui & Co., Ltd. (5.1%) of Japan. Construction of WAE's manufacturing facility will start in July, 1998 and assembly of 64 megabit DRAMs is scheduled to begin in July, 1999. Total investment in the plant is expected to reach 20 billion yen by 2000, by which time production will be in the region of 6.6 million DRAM a month.

WAE will utilize Toshiba's expertise in production and testing to assemble and test 64M DRAMs from wafers fabricated by Winbond Electronics Corp. Winbond has been a strategic ally of Toshiba since 1995. At that time, Toshiba licensed DRAM technology to Winbond, which it extended to include state-of-the-art 64 megabit DRAM in 1996.

Toshiba's investment in WAE allows it to receive over half of WAE's output, and assures the company of the support of a technology-compatible, fully-integrated manufacturing operation in Taiwan--one of the world's key production centers for information and communications equipment, including such PCs. Winbond will also procure DRAMs produced by WAE.

Walsin Advanced Electronics Ltd., a group company of Walsin Lihwa Corp, was established in 1995 to market 4M and 16M DRAMs that it assembled and tested from wafers fabricated by other companies.

Outline of Walton Advanced Electronics
Name Walton Advanced Electronics Ltd.
Address 2, West 13th street, K.E.P.Z., Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Established July 1, 1998
Paid-in Capital US$ 80 million
Production start July 1999
Area of site 5,005 m2
Floor area 25,000 m2
Business Assembly and testing of memory devices


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