A materials table outside the clean room of a chip factory in Regensburg under soft yellow light, a round box of milky translucent plastic with fine spoke-shaped ribs radiating across its lid, the lid lifted by a hand in a thin latex glove, inside it a round silicon wafer about fifteen centimetres across with a fine pale greenish-grey grid of rectangular chip fields shimmering in the light, the lid plain smooth and unmarked, beside it a stack of four identical closed boxes, a pale grey laminate tabletop, a stainless steel pass-through hatch in a bare white wall behind.
What it was used for
With its "Mega" corporate project Siemens set out to build state-of-the-art memory chips of its own. On 13 February 1987 Computerwoche reported that the 1 Mbit DRAM needed a feature size of 1.2 micrometres and occupied 54 square millimetres, and that mass production in Regensburg was to start that year. It gives the project 1.7 billion DM in investment, 800 million DM for research and development and 240 million DM in state subsidy. The Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum records that Siemens first worked with Philips and from 1985 with a Far Eastern firm, and that production in Regensburg began in early 1987 with know-how from Toshiba.
What was new
Bought-in knowledge was the method here, not the exception: Siemens had purchased know-how from Toshiba and still, by Computerwoche's February 1987 account, could not yet make 1 Mbit memories in series. The barb is in the same report: the project yielded no profit and served chiefly as an entry into logic-chip technology; by insiders' accounts Siemens had already ceased to cover its costs in the memory market before Regensburg started. How far behind Siemens was is shown by the surroundings: the HNF records that IBM announced 1 Mbit chip production on 18 April 1986 - dies of 7.7 by 10.5 millimetres, with itself as the first customer - and that Japanese firms had begun earlier still.
What the sources leave open: The statement about failing to cover costs is given by Computerwoche expressly as what insiders said; that hedge is carried over. Neither source opened gives unit numbers for the Siemens 1 Mbit DRAM.