TOKYO, Sept 2: Japan's Hitachi Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp said today that they will pull out of microchip production in the United States in the face of a severe slump in the semiconductor market.Hitachi said it would stop microchip production including four-megabit dynamic random access memory (dram) chips at its hitachi semiconductor (america) inc. In texas by the end of this month."The semiconductor memory market, especially the dram segment, has seen a significant loss of revenue over the past three years," mitsubishi said in a statement released in california."The price-per-bit for memory today sits at about 20 per cent of the normal trend line needed for a healthy, growing industry," it said.Mitsubishi's memory module assembly will be outsourced to cut operating costs further, with its north carolina design and engineering activities to be merged with its sunnyvale electronic device group, it said."With the planned restructuring, we will no longer have microchip production in theunited states," a mitsubishi official said.Its assembly of integrated circuits (ics) and test functions will be transferred to a japanese plant, the company said."With the planned restructuring, we will no longer have microchip production in the united states," a mitsubishi official said.Hitachi would lay off some 500 workers atthe texas plant and planned to merge hitachi semiconductor with hitachi micro systems inc. Based in california in october, the company said.
