Hitachi, TI End JV Arrangement
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 4/1/1998
(Tokyo, Japan) and Texas
Instruments (TI, Dallas, Texas) announced plans to discontinue their joint-venture
arrangement for the production of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in Richardson,
Texas. TI intends to form a new wholly owned subsidiary that would purchase the assets of
the joint-venture company, known as TwinStar Semiconductor Incorporated, and would hire
all the former joint-venture employees.
Hitachi and TI decided to discontinue the joint venture, which began operations in 1996, because of severe financial pressures from the decline in DRAM prices. The decline prevented TwinStar from building the adequate cash reserves necessary to sustain ongoing operations and invest in future growth.
Hitachi and TI have been cooperating on memory chip research and development projects since 1988. They announced plans to build the TwinStar facility in August 1994 for the purpose of producing 16Mb and 64Mb DRAMs. All chips produced by the joint venture have gone directly to Hitachi and TI for sale to their respective customers.
