After hooking up production equipment, the plant is expected to start running 300mm wafers in the second half of this year, and to be producing 10,000 wafers a month by the end of 2005.

"We believe the NAND market will see annual growth rates over 30 per cent from 2004 to 2008, from Yen700bn ($6.7bn) to Yen2.1bn ($20bn)," said Masashi Muromachi, CEO of Toshiba Semiconductor.

“Fab 3 is a testimony to the success of the relationship between Toshiba and SanDisk, which have pioneered the flash technology that is enabling so many new applications in consumer electronics and mobile markets," said Eli Harari, CEO of SanDisk.

The initial process technology used will be 90nm, migrating to 70nm in the first half of next year, following the introduction of 70nm on the 200mm line at Yokkaichi during 2005. In late 2006, the new fab is expected to start running a 55nm process.

Flash Partners is 50.1 per cent owned by Toshiba and 49.9 per cent by SanDisk. The output from the fab will be shared equally between Toshiba and SanDisk.

Environmentally conscious design will ensure that the energy consumed in wafer processing will be 30 per cent lower than that in Toshiba's current 200mm clean rooms.

According to US analyst iSuppli, Samsung had a 54 per cent market share in NAND flash in 2004 while Toshiba had 29 per cent.

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