Spansion flogs fabs to Fujitsu

CHIP FIRM Spansion, spun off by AMD, has sold old fabs to Fujitsu for $150 million in cash. Fujitsu will carry on making Spansion flash memory products.

Spansion (tick SPSN) has AMD's Hector Ruiz as chairman of the board. The CEO is Bertrand Cambou, ex VP of AMD. The president of Spansion Japan is Kazunori Imaoka, formerly head of FASL, the first joint venture between AMD and Fujitsu.

Confused yet? AMD and Fujitsu used to have a joint manufacturing firm (FASL) to produce flash memory. Now Spansion will sell the JV1 and JV2 manufacturing fabs in Japan to Fujitsu "for the mutual benefit of both companies".

Fujitsu Ltd owns one share in Spansion.

The JV3 facility will be the firm's biggest internal aluminium metal layer factory for current and legacy products.

The workforce will be employed "by either Spansion or Fujitsu". Spansion will redeploy some of the workforce at JV1 and JV2 to help it complete its SP1 12-inch wafer 45 nanometre Mirrorbit technology, in Japan.

Spansion will use the cash to fund its 12-inch fab in Japan.

Confused? We sure are. See the links below. µ

See Also
Fujitsu selling flash fab to AMD?
AMD buys into Fujitsu plant
AMD fails as white knight for Fujitsu fab
AMD-Fujitsu in potential flash memory spat
Fujitsu close to selling Gresham fab?
AMD, Fujitsu, Saifun to work together on flash
AMD, Fujitsu, Saifun one big happy family
AMD, Fujitsu may merge flash memory operations
Fujitsu, AMD to merge flash businesses
AMD, Fujitsu rejig flash memory business
AMD, Fujitsu bite into Intel's flash market share
Spansion says Mirrorbit Flash memory ready