Renesas lines up revamp plans

TOKYO: Japan's Renesas Electronics Corp is keen on its restructuring efforts to make itself profitable. The company is now moving towards a fab-lite strategy by cutting 5,000 jobs. The company has decided not to invest in new fabs and it will use foundries for devices at 28-nm and below. In terms of R&D, the company eyes being part of IBM Corp's fab club.

As expected, Renesas Electronics on April 1 had effectively concluded its integration with NEC Electronics Corp and Renesas Technology Corp. As part of the strategy, almost 5,000 employees will be handed over pink slips in the course of the current fiscal and will complete the exercise by March 2013. As part of its plan to grow, the company is also focusing on the expansion of its overseas businesses by raising the number of overseas employees from 29 percent in the current fiscal year to 32 percent by March 2013.The process will complete by March2013.

The company has bought out the 300-mm wafer lines at Naka plant and Renesas Electronics Yamagata Semiconductor’s Tsuruoka plant as manufacturing facilities for its basic products, especially for systems-on-chips (SoCs) up to 40-nm. Renesas will go for outside foundries, such as Global Foundries Inc and TSMC, on all of its 28-nm and smaller geometry semiconductor products