Motorola Inc won’t be making Toshiba Corp-designed 4M-bit dynamic random access memory at its new MOS-II plant in Austin, Texas after all – it seems the company has decided to design its own 16M-bit dynamic, which it hopes will eventually be manufactured at the new site, due to open in the spring. Electronic News reports that Toshiba insisted Motorola could produce its 4M-bit part only through the Tohoku Semiconductor joint venture – Motorola claimed that it had the right for front-end production of Toshiba’s 4M-bit – this was one of the issues leading to the negotiation of a new pact between the two companies last summer. But the fact that Motorola has abandoned plans to produce the 4M-bit memory chip suggests that the new agreement can’t have held any joy for Motorola. Toshiba says that whereas the old agreement enabled Motorola to make 1M-bit parts in its own plants, the new deal will concentrate 4M-bit production in the joint venture. It has been suggested that Toshiba’s reluctance to release the 4M-bit technology for Motorola’s own use is its way of paying Motorola back for its refusal to license the Japanese company to fabricate the 68030 microprocessor.
