NEC Corp will transfer semiconductor process technology to China for volume production of 8-bit microcontrollers, the Nippon Keizai Shimbun reported. The Japanese paper noted thet the 1994 abolition of trade restrictions under the former Co-ordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Control made the NEC move possible, but no other electronics company has transferred advanced semiconductor technology to China. NEC’s Peking-based Shougang NEC Electronics Co joint venture will start doing 8-bit microcontroller chips for use in household appliances from next summer, but will later do 4M-bit dynamics too. NEC plans to invest $130m in the venture to expand its assembly lines and boost its output by about 70% to 5,000 6 wafers a month; it now makes 4-bit microco ntrollers.
