Toshiba will buy IBM's share of Dominion Semiconductor, the US chip manufacturer that Toshiba and IBM established as a joint venture in 1996, officials at IBM said late last week. Under the terms of the deal, Toshiba will take full control of the Manassas, Virginia-based venture in December 2000.
In the interim, Toshiba will boost its stake of Dominion's production from 50 per cent to 75 per cent and convert some of its new production capacity from DRAM to flash memory. The company also said that it will raise monthly production at the facility from the equivalent of 4 million 64MB DRAM units today to 6 million units by the end of the year. Financial terms of the IBM buyout have not been set.