Toshiba Corp. and SanDisk Corp. on Tuesday officially celebrated the opening of their Fab 5 manufacturing facility. The fab has already commenced operations next month and Toshiba hopes that the factory as well as its successors will make the company the world’s largest maker of NAND flash memory.

Toshiba began the construction of Fab 5 in July 2010, and the new facility, equipped with manufacturing equipment funded by Toshiba and SanDisk, started volume production in July 2011. Fab 5 currently uses 24nm process technology and its first wafer outs will be in August. In time, the fab will transition to more advanced process generations, starting with recently announced 19nm technology, the world's smallest, most advanced process node.

Norio Sasaki, the president of Toshiba, said his company wanted to soon overtake South Korean rival Samsung Electronics as the world's leading maker of flash memory, reports Reuters news-agency.

The fab is a five-floor building with 187 thousand square meters of the total floor space. The new fab will the third 300mm manufacturing facility operated by Toshiba and SanDisk. The factury is located at Toshiba's Yokkaichi Operations in Mie Prefecture, Japan. SanDisk's operations in Yokkaichi include more than 300 employees under the leadership of SanDisk Japan president and general manager, Atsuyoshi Koike.

Fab 5 incorporates advanced earthquake-absorbing structures and integrates multiple power compensation techniques for protection against unexpected disruptions. LED lighting and power-saving manufacturing equipment will support the fab in securing Toshiba's goal of 12% less CO2 emissions than Fab 4. A wafer transportation system links the facility with Fabs 3 and 4 to support efficient manufacturing.

Tags: Toshiba, SanDisk, Flash, NAND, 24nm, 19nm, Samsung