Hynix's future in Eugene unsettled amid memory chip decline

Posted by The Silicon Forest Blog July 23, 2008 10:30AM At the southern edge of the Silicon Forest, The Register-Guard reports today that Eugene is fearing for the future of its Hynix's memory chip plant. Prices for memory chips like the DRAM products Hynix makes in Eugene are in steep decline, dragging down the whole semiconductor industry. The Eugene factory has another strike against it -- it makes its chips on older, 200-millimeter wafers, which are nearing obsolescence. From The Register Guard: In the next two years, virtually all producers of commodity DRAM will be using 300-millimeter wafers, predicts Trevor Yancey, IC Insight's vice president of technology. "So that means you either convert your older DRAM fabs (factories) to other products, or sell them, or shut them down," he said. "We don't have any insight on what... [read full story]