Micron Technology Inc. is moving up its timetable to hire 1,200 people in Boise, and may add hundreds more by 1997 because demand for computer memory chips is exploding.

“The number looks like it’s going to increase,” spokesman Kipp Bedard said Wednesday. He declined to be more specific.

The worldwide market for Micron’s main product - dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips - is expected to grow 78 percent between 1995 and 1998, to about $91 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Micron is the eighth-biggest DRAM producer in the world, with 5.8 percent of the market. It also is building a $1.3 billion factory in Utah to keep up with demand.

Micron already is farther ahead than it expected to be when it laid out its hiring plans for Idaho legislators in January. At the time, Micron expected to have 6,600 employees in Ada and Canyon counties by the end of 1995. Employment already is 6,700.

Micron employs 7,200 people in Idaho, North Carolina, California and Minnesota.