Tokyo--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it will purchase IBM Corporation's share of Dominion Semiconductor, L.L.C, the U.S.-based joint venture of the two companies that manufactures semiconductors. Transfer of ownership will be completed by December 2000. Details of the purchase agreement were not disclosed.

Dominion began operations at its Manassas, Virginia in September 1997. It currently has a monthly production capacity equivalent to 4 million 64M Dynamic RAMs (DRAMs), which is planned to be increased to 6 million pieces by the end of this year.

Positioning Dominion as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toshiba is an integral part of the global manufacturing strategy underpinning Toshiba Corporation's reorganization of its memory business. Securing a full fledged manufacturing site in the U.S will allow Toshiba to realize stable production and supply of products best suited to meet market demand, and will significantly strengthen the company's presence in one of the world's central markets. Toshiba will operate Dominion with a long-term perspective and reinforce its manufacturing and engineering capabilities.

In the interim period to the purchase, Toshiba will raise its share of Dominion's product allocation to the two companies from 50% to 75%. The part of Dominion's capacity currently utilized by IBM will be converted to production of NAND flash memory from the fourth quarter of 2000, a move that will establish Dominion as an important NAND flash manufacturing facility serving the U.S. market.

This will follow a transition to 0.20 micrometer process technology that will be completed by August 1999, enabling flexible production of high-performance and high-density memory products, such as Rambus DRAM and Double Data Rate Synchronous DRAM and other high-density devices. Fabrication of high-density NAND flash memories will also require the same advanced lithography as DRAMs.

Toshiba intends to secure a stable foundation for its memory business by expanding output of non-DRAM products and promoting an expansion of high value-added DRAM for non-PC applications, such as games, networks and servers. The company plans to raise the share of non-DRAM products from the current 35% to 50% in FY2001.

In line with optimized global production and logistics, Toshiba will also seek the best product mix of DRAMs, Static RAMs (SRAMs) and NAND flash memories at Dominion, aligning its production with that of its Yokkaichi facility in Japan and at Winbond Electronics Corp in Taiwan.