Fujitsu Limited, a leading maker of various electronics, on Monday announced its decision to pursue the reorganization of its semiconductor manufacturing business divisions into a new subsidiary scheduled to be established within March 2008. The decision hardly comes as a surprise as numerous Japan-based electronics conglomerates recently announced plans to reorganize their chip manufacturing businesses.

The new subsidiary will enable Fujitsu to accelerate the growth of and intensify its focus on its ASSP (application specific standard product) business in addition to its ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) business, while moving forward with business development offering greater speed and flexibility that are characteristic of the LSI (large scale integration) industry.

Fujitsu also announced that development and mass-production prototyping of its advanced process technologies for the 90nm-generation and beyond will be consolidated to its Mie plant located in Mie prefecture of central Japan. Leveraging this consolidation, Fujitsu will strive to accelerate development of process technologies for 45nm-generation and beyond.

At present Fujitsu operates several semiconductor manufacturing plants in Japan, where it makes various chips for itself, its internal partners (e.g., Fujitsu Group or Fujitsu Siemens Computers) as well as external partners, among which are companies like S3 Graphics, graphics chip designer owned by Via Technologies. Since the company develops its fabrication technologies itself, it needs to streamline its operations considerably so that to remain profitable.

As part of Fujits’s initiative to structurally reform its LSI business, advanced process technology development for 90nm-generation and beyond, and 90-nm-generation logic LSI mass-production prototyping, functions which have thus far been conducted at the Akiruno TC plant, will be transferred to the Mie plant, which processes 300mm wafers. Transferring development operations to a single plant is likely to improve technology development timeframes at Fujitsu, while keeping the costs on approximately the same level as today.

The reorganization is scheduled to be implemented in March 2008. Details regarding the new subsidiary to be established as a result of the reorganization are currently under consideration, and are scheduled to be announced when available.