New Japanese Chip Dwarfs Capacity of U.S. Competitors
American hopes to recapture leadership in the computer memory-chip market were dealt a blow today when Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. announced that it had developed a prototype of a 16-megabit D-RAM (dynamic random access memory) semiconductor.
It is the first company in the world to build a test model of a memory chip with that much capacity. The chip is able to store 16 million bits of information, equivalent to 64 pages of newspaper text. It has 64 times the capacity of the current standard, the 256-kilobit D-RAM memory device, and four times more storage capability than the biggest chips being developed by other firms.
Memory chips are used in computers and other electronic products to store data. Through similar advances in miniaturization, engineers have been able, for example, to decrease the size of computers while greatly enhancing their capabilities.
The NTT announcement, which was made both here and at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in New York, came amid disclosures by IBM, Texas Instruments, Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric of developments in efforts to produce a 4-megabit D-RAM chip.
Eisuke Arai, head of the NTT research team that developed the 16-megabit prototype, predicted that the chip could come into mass production as early as 1992. Sample shipments of 16-megabit chips, he said, could begin as early as 1990.
Arai told reporters in Tokyo that NTT, which is interested in the megachip technology for development of large-scale integrated circuits used in telecommunications, said his firm had not decided whether it would offer its technology to outside firms.
As a general purpose memory chip, a 16-megabit semiconductor “would enhance video reproduction immensely,” he said.
NTT, he added, has “absolutely no intention of having its technology used for military purposes.”
In New York, IBM engineers said Wednesday that the company’s 4-megabit chip has been produced on a regular 1-megabit chip production line in Essex Junction, Vt., and is past the prototype stage. The company did not predict when manufacturing might begin but an analyst said it would be at least two years before the new IBM device finds its way to the marketplace.
Japanese manufacturers have captured 90% of the world market for the current generation of memory chips, the 256-kilobit DRAMs, and have already started mass production of 1-megabit chips, which are expected to become the mainstay general purpose memory chip from 1988 to around 1990.
Last month, IBM announced it would become the first company to use an 1-megabit chip in its largest mainframe computers.
Although IBM and Texas Instruments have been working on huge memory chips, most other U.S. chip companies have abandoned the D-RAM business. Officials in U.S. industry and government have expressed concerns about dependence on foreign producers; two separate committees have recently proposed formation of a consortium to manufacture memory chips, thus enabling the U.S. to recapture competitiveness in what has been called a vital technology.
The industry-sponsored proposal for a consortium to be called Sematech has not determined what kind of chip it would make, although sources have said a 16-megabit D-RAM is among the devices being considered. More than 40 companies, including IBM, have been involved in the planning for Sematech. Sources said IBM had agreed to give its 4-megabit model to the consortium for use in developing a 16-megabit chip.
A senior Commerce Department official, who asked not to be named, predicted that the consortium would put the United States back into competition with Japan in memory chips in two to three years.
But in its report, a special task force of the Defense Department recently recommended that the government spend $1 billion to finance a chip-making consortium that would focus on manufacturing a 64-megabit D-RAM chip. Such a chip would be one generation beyond the 16-megabit device.
The Commerce Department official said the consortium would create a flexible manufacturing plant--loaded with robots and controlled by computers--to produce the new chip, as well as any kind of custom-made semiconductor.
