World Wide Memory: A Tour of Kingston Taiwan

Final Thoughts

Turning memory chips and PCBs into finished memory is fairly simple compared to motherboard or video card production. However, the processes are still very similar in modern manufacturing plants. There are just more raw parts to manipulate in the motherboard or video card manufacturing process, and more functions to verify in Quality Assurance.

The biggest surprise for us was the complete 100% final testing that Kingston uses for all DIMMs. We expected a statistical sampling method based on ongoing failure analysis to something like a Six Sigma confidence level. What we didn't expect was the 100% inspection Kingston assures us is a part of all their memory manufacturing. Kingston is very proud of the fact they have pioneered many of the processes and QA procedures that are now in common use in the memory industry, and it turns out that 100% final testing is a procedure commonly used by many of Kingston's competitors in the memory market.

Kingston Taiwan is also a major manufacturer of flash memory of all types - SD and Compact Flash memory in particular. While we were able to tour the interesting flash memory lines, Kingston asked that we not take pictures, since they consider some of their processes to still be trade secrets.

Some Kingston facilities also manufacture the wafers used for memory chips, which is the same basic process as CPU production. Memory chip production obviously adds a great deal of complexity to the manufacturing process, but whether Kingston does their own manufacturing or buys memory chips from others, the memory chip manufacturing is a prequel to the memory assembly that we saw in Taiwan.

Kingston today is truly a memory manufacturer known around the world. There are manufacturers well-known in Asia or the US or Europe, but Kingston is the only memory maker that we can confidently say is recognized in every corner of the globe.