Intel invests in Taiwanese flash-chip packager
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NAND flash chips have become popular thanks to widespread use for song storage in digital music players, including Apple Inc.'s iPod Shuffle and Nano.
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The chipmaker's 3 Series chipset promises computer users a serious performance boost.
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Sun Microsystems has tapped Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to manufacture its latest UltraSparc processors, Sun said Tuesday.The Taiwanese company will also collaborate with Sun in the OpenSparc program to expand research on the processors in Taiwan. The two companies plan to expand the university outreach program in Taiwan, as well as offer OpenSparc technology to other TSMC customers.TSMC will manufacture UltraSparc processors using its 45-nanometer production technology, as well as future generations of the UltraSparc, Sun said to a statement. Texas Instruments, Sun&#39;s current UltraSparc partner, will continue to test and package the processors.Sun tapped TSMC for production because of its lower costs, in addition to its advanced technology, Sun said. The companies are already working to make the transition to TSMC from TI as fast as possible, Sun added.TSMC is the world&#39;s largest contract chip maker.The term 45-nanometer refers to making chips with transistors and other components as tiny as 45nm, enabling them to be smaller, more powerful and energy-efficient. The nanometer term describes the size of the smallest feature that can be manufactured on a single chip. There are about three to six atoms in a nanometer and there are a billion nanometers in a meter.TSMC has said that some types of chips made using 45nm technology are generally 40 percent smaller than the slightly older 65nm size, use less power, and have 40 percent greater functionality.Currently, most chips are still made using technology 90nm and larger, but the move to smaller sizes is increasing, led by high end chips such as DRAM (dynamic RAM), microprocessors, core logic chip sets, and graphics processors. Intel, the world&#39;s largest chip maker, was first to mass produce chips using 45nm technology.The move to developing smaller chip manufacturing technology is crucial to meet user demand for ever smaller devices that can do more, such as mobile phones with built-in PDA (personal digital assistant) and camera functions, and digital music players. Chip makers can also increase output using the smaller technology.Sun has established six major universities as OpenSparc Technology Centers of Excellence so far, all of them in the U.S. The schools include the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Texas, Austin; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Stanford University; and Carnegie Mellon University. The universities must sign a two-year commitment to execute chip design research and course work based on Sun&#39;s chip multi-threading (CMT) design.If a Taiwanese university is chosen to participate as an OpenSparc Technology Center of Excellence, it will be the first outside the U.S.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan  - A Taiwan government committee on  Monday gave the green light to the island's top two memory chip  makers, Powerchip  and ProMOS , to set up  plants in China, local media reported.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Intel Corp. has designed a computer chip that promises to perform calculations as quickly an entire data center -- while consuming as much energy as a light bulb.
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(InfoWorld) - Industry associations from India and Taiwan have signed an agreement to work more closely in the future on semiconductor technology, including building better business ties and finding further areas for collaboration. The India Semiconductor Association and Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association pledged in a memorandum of understanding signed Monday, to host more meetings, organize more events, seek out business opportunities, help companies from each place find partners, create an information database and more as time goes on. The agreement ties together one of the world's largest semiconductor producing economies, Taiwan, to one of the fastest growing markets in the world, India. India is also keen to build up its semiconductor prowess, officials said. Taiwan is home to the world's two largest contract chip makers, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), as well as the biggest chip packaging and testing company, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. The island also boasts the second biggest chip design industry by revenue, behind only the U.S., and recent investment in computer memory chips has also transformed Taiwan into a DRAM powerhouse. The island makes nearly a fifth of the world's DRAM, and companies are fast moving into NAND flash memory. Some Taiwanese companies have already taken advantage of opportunities in India. MediaTek Inc., Taiwan's largest chip design firm and the biggest maker of chips for optical drives such as DVD players, has already set up a software development center in Noida, India. The center is key to one of MediaTek's top selling products, mobile phone chips. Not only does the Indian office create the user interface for MediaTek mobile phone products, but it is also a point from which the company can tap India's fast-growing mobile phone industry. MediaTek is already one of the top mobile phone chip makers in the China market. India boasts the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, making it an important place for chip makers to set up shop. The nation added 8.06 million new subscribers in July, raising its total to 192.98 million, according to the according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). By comparison, the number of mobile phone subscribers in China rose to 508.56 million at the end of July, an addition of 6.9 million new users in the month, according to China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII). A number of chip companies from around the world have established research centers in India. Qualcomm Inc., the largest chip design house by revenue and a major U.S. mobile chip company, has also opened a software and chip development lab in India. The company uses it as a base for research and development as well as a place from which to promote its CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology, according to its Web site.
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Next week's Computex trade show is where Taiwan's most influential hardware makers -- those who make systems for Hewlett-Packard and Dell, among others -- will tip upcoming trends and wares to be released later this year.
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Intel, the world&#39;s biggest semiconductor maker, said Monday it built a test chip with a new process that creates faster circuits by packing 10 million transistors into an area the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.
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The device is part of the Taiwanese computer maker's ongoing attempt to re-establish itself in the U.S. market.
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Hoping to annihilate its rivals in Taiwan&#39;s high-end gaming market, chipmaker Intel yesterday unveiled a new set of high-performance products targeting hardcore users craving for an optimized platform for media manipulation and realistic game-play.
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(InfoWorld) - Taiwan's largest DRAM maker, Powerchip Semiconductor, on Monday denied a local media report that it planned to build a chip factory in China with a Japanese partner. The Chinese-language Commercial Times newspaper said Powerchip had invited Japan's Renesas Technology to jointly invest in a chip factory in China. Renesas and Powerchip currently work together in technology and chip production outsourcing pacts. Powerchip said it isn't making any China plans right now because it's too busy. "This is just a rumor, nothing has been done yet," said Eric Tang, a vice president at Powerchip. Powerchip has alreadyÂ gained approval from the Taiwan governmentÂ to invest in China, but one of the rules requires it to move used equipment from an old factory in Taiwan to its new China plant, instead of buying new machinery. The trouble is that orders at Powerchip are too brisk to consider such a move, Tang said. The company's older chip plant, called an 8-inch plant due to the size of the silicon wafers used to make chips on, is still making money in Taiwan so there's no need to move it to China right now, he said. Powerchip may buy used equipment from elsewhere and move it to China instead of using gear from its own 8-inch plant, he said. The company has no plans to move forward on the project in the near term. Taiwan and China remain enemies after splitting in 1949 amid civil war, the reason Taipei carefully regulates high tech investments to the mainland. Despite their strained relationship, China remains the favored destination for Taiwanese investment due to their shared language and culture, as well as China's lower costs and incentives for building factories.
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The Taiwanese electronics industry daily DigiTimes is citing motherboard manufacturers there as saying they're gearing up now for production of new models that will support three new AMD premium processors.
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The chipmaker unveiled on Wednesday its Intel Express 910GL, a chipset that offers PC makers the ability to add more-advanced features, such as Intel High Definition Audio, to their low-end PCs.
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(InfoWorld) - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., the world's largest contract chip maker, reported its worst monthly revenue in 20 months on Friday, but analysts applauded the figure as further proof that an industry glut is dissipating. TSMC said its revenue in February hit NT$20.58 billion (US$624.2 million), down 14.3 percent compared to last year and its worst monthly revenue figure since it reported revenue of NT$20.11 billion in June, 2005. Despite the poor showing, analysts said it was a strong figure considering February is a shorter work month, at only 28 days, and that a major holiday, the Lunar New Year, celebrated throughout Taiwan and much of Asia, also slowed work at TSMC factories. Last year, the Lunar New Year, which is usually a week-long holiday in Taiwan, was on Jan. 29. This year, the first day of the Year of the Pig fell on Feb. 18. "I think the February sales figure was fantastic. It was only down about 2 percent from January," said Warren Lau, chip industry analyst at Macquarie Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong. He said TSMC's February revenue was further proof that a chip glut that has hampered the industry for the past several months is nearing an end. But the return to health over the next few months could be specific to TSMC, and not include the wider chip industry. Earlier this week, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) said it will miss its revenue goal for the first quarter of 2007, while rival Intel Corp. outlined plans to beat a microprocessor glut and weak corporate demand for PCs by stepping up chip development speeds. The two companies engaged in a price war last year, and continue to suffer as they duke it out in the market, analysts say. Gartner Inc. believes the chip industry won't start to recover from the glut until the second half of this year. Rising inventories in late 2006 caused companies to slow production and ease off on buying new machinery as a drop in orders idled more and more production lines, said David Christensen, a Gartner analyst, in a recent report. "Look for this trend to continue through the first half of 2007, followed by a slow recovery in the second half of the year," he wrote. Last month, the market researcher revised down its revenue growth estimate for the chip industry this year to 6.4 percent, from a previous forecast of 9.2 percent. Gartner estimates chip industry revenue will reach US$259.7 billion this year. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Japanese memory chip maker Elpida MemoryÂ and Taiwan's Powerchip SemiconductorÂ have announced a broad plan to invest $13.9 billion over five years to build four new DRAM factories in Taiwan. The investment, announced Thursday, will go into a new joint venture company that does not yet have an English name. The new company will open early next year in an advanced 12-inch chip factory Powerchip started building in central Taiwan earlier this year. In coming years, the joint venture company will build three more DRAM (dynamic-RAM) factories on the island, with output reaching 60,000 silicon wafers per month each, for total planned capacity of a massive 240,000 wafers. Thousands of DRAM chips can be made on each wafer. The investment means the companies are confident in the future of the DRAM industry and in their ability to compete against market leader Samsung Electronics. In fact, Elpida Chief Executive Officer Yukio SakamotoÂ pledged to surpass SamsungÂ in terms of DRAM market share within three years. The DRAM industry isÂ ripe for new factories. Most companies in the business have invested in non-DRAM production lines in recent years, mainly NAND flash memory, which is popular in digital cameras and iPods. ButÂ DRAM prices have surgedÂ recently due to strong PC sales, and the launch of Microsoft Windows Vista is expected to keep DRAM prices strong over the next several months due to strong anticipated PC demand and the greater memory content required by Vista compared to Windows XP. The two companies intend to marry Elpida's technology prowess with Powerchip's low cost manufacturing know-how, said Frank Huang, chairman of Powerchip. The companies will be even partners in the venture, each putting in their half of the value of investment, and each deriving half of the production from the new company. Elpida had beenÂ looking at four possible investment locationsÂ before deciding to partner with Powerchip in Taiwan. The company's CEO traveled to China to visit manufacturing partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) of Shanghai, in addition to scouting locations in Japan and Singapore. Despite better incentives offered by the Chinese government, Sakamoto said his company's relationship with Powerchip and Taiwan's superior infrastructure swayed Elpida's final decision. "Yesterday, Powerchip and Elpida had a very friendly relationship, but today we became a family," said Sakamoto. The two companies have been working together for over four years. Elpida will continue to use SMIC as a manufacturing partner in China, he said. Elpida and Powerchip will initially invest NT$40 billion to get the first DRAM factory up and running. They expect to move production line equipment into the factory by May 2007 and start mass production in August. The joint venture company will begin life with the latest production technology thanks to Elpida, etching transistors and other parts on silicon at the tiny size of 70-nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. Powerchip will take charge of daily operations and staff the factory. By the time the fourth plant is finished, Powerchip reckons it will have hired 8,000 new workers for the joint venture. Elpida and Powerchip will also co-invest in research and development, they said. Their technology pact will ensure joint development down to the 50nm level and beyond. The companies plan to sign a final agreement on the joint venture in January.
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(InfoWorld) - Semiconductor foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing CompanyÂ (TSMC) has opened an office in Bangalore, India, that it says will help customers to complete their chip designs faster and bring products more quickly to market. TSMC's new office will work with the semiconductor design subsidiaries in India of TSMC's North American, European, and Asian customers, the company said Monday. It will also work with the large number of Indian chip design companies that do not have their own manufacturing facilities. India has emerged as a key location for chip design, with a large number of multinational semiconductor companies such as Intel and Texas InstrumentsÂ setting up semiconductor design centers in the country. Chip companies that contract manufacture to other companies, like Broadcom, have also set up chip design centers in India. Besides these foreign companies, there are also a number of Indian chip companies and contract designers.
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A competing chip from rival Advanced Micro Devices will likely arrive several months earlier.