Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Ltd. (FASL) Breaks Ground for Megafab for Flash Memory Products

Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Ltd. (FASL) Breaks Ground for Megafab for Flash Memory Products

SUNNYVALE, CA -- 6/19/2000 -- AMD announced that Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Ltd. (FASL), a joint venture of AMD and Fujitsu Ltd., broke ground today at Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, for its third "megafab" for the manufacture of flash memory devices. Construction of the facility will begin immediately, and work will continue around the clock to meet a planned completion of the clean room by December of this year. Initial production is planned for the second half of 2001. The facility, designated as JV3, will encompass more than 100,000 square feet of clean room space and be capable of producing 7,500 eight-inch wafers per week when fully equipped and operating at peak capacity. AMD said the new facility will include a shell for future expansion. The estimated cost of the JV3 facility is approximately $1.5 billion.

"AMD is committed to ensuring that our customers are well supported with all the innovative flash memory products that they require," said Walid Maghribi, group vice president and general manager of the Memory Group at AMD. "With demand for our leading-edge flash memory products exceeding capacity, AMD and Fujitsu have committed to an aggressive expansion of production capacity to meet high forecasted demand. With worldwide demand for flash memory products, measured in annual bit consumption, growing at a 100 percent compound annual rate since 1994, we believe we must continue a rapid expansion of production capacity to support our customer's long-term needs." Maghribi said he expects that future expansion of the newest FASL megafab will include a 12-inch (300-millimeter) facility for flash memory products. "Based on current industry demand forecasts, I believe that we will need to begin construction of JV4 as a 12-inch facility some time in 2002." said Maghribi.

"High-density flash memory is a critical enabling technology for applications such as cellular telephones, high-bandwidth networking equipment, automotive applications, set-top boxes, and hand-held information appliances. We believe the explosion of demand for these products will continue to drive rapid growth of flash memory consumption for the next several years. We believe FASL must continue to double bit production capacity each year for the next three years to maintain its position as the world's leading producer of flash memory devices."

FASL recently commenced shipments of flash memory devices from a facility in Iwate, Japan, and will begin shipments from a facility in Gresham, Oregon, in the second half of this year.

Cautionary Statement
This release contains forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this release involve risks and uncertainty that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The company's capacity expansion plans are based on current forecasts of demand that are subject to change depending on evolving general industry conditions, changes in customer needs, and the product introductions and capacity expansion of competitors.

While demand currently exceeds production capacity, there can be no assurance that demand for the company's flash memory products will continue at current or greater levels. We urge investors to review in detail the risks and uncertainties in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to the report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 26, 1999 and the report on Form 10-Q for the three month period ended April 2, 2000.

About AMD Flash Memory Devices
AMD technology is employed by the world's largest producer of flash memory devices, Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Ltd. (FASL). AMD flash memory products encompass a broad spectrum of densities and features to support a wide range of markets. AMD offers many flash memory products, such as the award-winning Simultaneous Read-Write (SRW) product family; Super Low Voltage 1.8V flash memory devices; and Burst- and Page-Mode devices. AMD developed the robust Known Good Die (KGD) program and the patented negative gate erase technology, and refined the industry-standard Fine-pitch Ball Grid Array (FBGA).

All AMD flash memory devices are guaranteed for a minimum of one million write cycles per sector and 20 years' data retention, making them the most reliable non-volatile memory devices in the industry.