Micron technology said it will invest up to 500 billion yen ($3.6 billion) in Japan over the next few years with support from the Japanese government to up its game in next-generation memory chips.
The move indicates that the Japanese government is ambitiously continuing to revive the semiconductor space and introduce chip technology to the country to bolster the chip supply chain amid rising tension between the US and China.
The US chip giant plans to install extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography in Japan to make next-generation dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), called 1-gamma chips, at its plant in Hiroshima.
The 1-gamma node, which follows the industry’s most advanced 1-beta node, will be the smallest cell size in the world. Micron expects “to start production of EUV at the 1-gamma node in Taiwan and Japan from 2025,” it said in a statement. In November, Micron began mass production of its 1-beta DRAM at the Hiroshima factory.
Micron, the only company making DRAM in Japan, will be the first to bring EUV chip making equipment to Japan. The EUV technology with the 1-gamma node will enable the next-generation node to “deliver faster, more power-efficient, and more powerful memory products.”
The American chip juggernaut produces about a third of the DRAM used by Japanese companies in industries such as automotive, data centers, 5G infrastructure and medical devices.
“We are proud to be the first to use EUV in Japan and to develop and manufacture Gamma 1 at our plant in Hiroshima,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, in the statement.
Japan has supported the country’s chip industry.
Last year, the Japanese government met a handful of tech companies, including Kioxia, SoftBank, Sony, Toyota and NEC, backed Rapidus, which aims to make 2-nanometer chips by 2027. earmarked grants for a joint chip research center and chipmakers such as Kioxia, TSMC and Micron to establish their factories in Japan.
Rahm Emanuel, United States Ambassador to Japan, said: “This partnership shows how allies, when working together, can create economic opportunity and security in advanced technologies.”
Meanwhile Micron has been involved in an ongoing cybersecurity investigation in Chinalaunched a month ago by the country’s cybersecurity watchdog.
Micron, which now has more than 4,000 engineers and technicians in Japan, has hired more than 1,500 workers in the country in the past five years.
