Elpida Memory

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Elpida Memory, Inc.

Industry	Semiconductor industry
Founded	1999
Headquarters	Yaesu, Chūō, Tokyo, Japan
Products	DRAM
Employees	3196
Website	www.elpida.com

Elpida Memory, Inc. (エルピーダメモリ株式会社, Erupīda Memori Kabushiki-gaisha^?) (TYO: 6665) is a corporation established in 1999 that develops, designs, manufactures and sells dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) products. It is also a semiconductor foundry. With headquarters in Yaesu, Chūō, Tokyo, Japan, it was formed under the name NEC Hitachi Memory in 1999 by the merger of the Hitachi, Ltd. and NEC DRAM businesses. In the following year it took its present name, and in 2003 took on the Mitsubishi DRAM business. In 2004 it listed its shares in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Currently, the company's CEO is Yukio Sakamoto.

1 History
2 Products
3 See also
4 External links
5 References

History

Elpida Memory was founded in 1999 and began development operations for DRAM products in 2000.

In 2001, the company began construction of its 300mm wafer fabrication plant. Later that year, it began sales operations in domestic markets.

In 2003, the company took over Mitsubishi Electric Corporation's DRAM operations and employed Mitsubishi development engineers.

In 2004, Elpida Memory went public and was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

In 2006, the company established Akita Elpida to take on the development of advanced back-end technology processes.

In March, 2006 Elpida reported consolidated sales of 241,500,000,000 Japanese yen. It employed 3196 people.

In 2002, armed with the Sherman Antitrust Act, the United States Department of Justice began a probe into the activities of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) manufacturers. US computer makers, including Dell and Gateway, claimed that inflated DRAM pricing was causing lost profits and hindering their effectiveness in the marketplace. To date, five manufacturers have pleaded guilty to their involvement in an international price-fixing conspiracy including Hynix, Infineon, Micron Technology, Samsung, and Elpida. Micron Technology was not fined for its involvement due to co-operation with investigators.

On April 3, 2010, Elpida Memory sold ¥18.5billion worth of shares to Kingston Technology ^[1]

On April 22, 2010, Elpida announced it has developed the worlds first 4Gb DDR3 SDRAM. Based on an advanced 40 nm process, the new eco-friendly DRAM uses about 30% less power compared to two 40 nm process 2-gigabit DDR3 SDRAMs (4-gigabit equivalent) and enables servers, data centers and other large capacity memory systems to reduce power consumption. It can operate at not only standard DDR3 1.5 V but also 1.35 V to allow greater system power savings. The target market for this new SDRAM includes servers, workstations, PCs/notebook PCs, digital consumer electronics and game consoles. Elpida has recently engaged in the development of Flash NAND memories based on charge trapping technology.

As of July 2011, Elpida announced that it plans to raise $987 million by selling shares and bonds.^[2] In August 2011, Elpida claimed to be the first memory maker to begin sampling 25 nm DRAMs.^[3]

On February 27, 2012, Elpida filed bankruptcy ^[4]^[5]. As reported by Kyodo, the debts were 481 billion Yen. The company reported, that negotiations about refinancing did not progress as planned.