India, Taiwan Team on Chip Development
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Industry associations from both countries have signed a pact to collaborate on semiconductor technology.
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Chinese companies will be welcome to exhibit at Taiwan's annual Computex IT next year, the show's organizers said Saturday. The announcement came as organizers revealed a 10 percent increase in the number of foreign visitors at this year's show compared to last year.
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(InfoWorld) - Texas Instruments, the world's largest maker of mobile phone chips, plans to work more closely with its Asian contract chip manufacturing partners to develop new production technologies, a company spokeswoman confirmed. The company said earlier this year it planned to stop developing its own chip production technologies and instead work more closely with contract manufacturing partners on joint development. A TI spokeswoman confirmed that the company plans to work with Asian contract chip makers, or foundries, on the new strategy. TI currently farms out chip production to four Asian chip foundries: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.Â (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) of Taiwan; Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing; and China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., according to Tracy Zhou, head of media relations in the Asia Pacific region for TI. "For the cooperation with foundries, TI will continue working with its current advanced logic foundry partners," she said in an e-mail. The change in tactics is significant. TI is one of the world's biggest chip makers, and has long developed its own production technologies. For any new chip, engineers must focus not only on the circuit design of the chip itself, but also on how it will be mass produced. If a design is too complicated to manufacture at a reasonable price, it can get the boot even if it has promising features. The outsourcing of chip production development by companies that previously did it mostly themselves, such as TI, has become a trend over the past several months, said Jackson Hu, the chairman of UMC, at the company's fourth quarter investor conference last month. "Some companies are even closing their own chip factories and farming out orders to foundry chip makers, while others are simply no longer investing in chip production R&D, and instead putting that investment money into chip product design efforts. We believe this is a positive industry trend, a win-win situation, and a strong affirmation of our R&D capabilities," Hu said. The fact that a company the caliber of TI is willing to leave the production side of technology development up to contract chip makers, at least in part, shows how far the foundry business has come. TSMC was the first company to focus on manufacturing chips that are designed by other companies. Before TSMC opened, small chip design firms had to ask Intel, Motorola, and other big companies to manufacture their chips, and these companies would only agree if their factories weren't already full. Most small companies didn't have enough money to set up their own chip factories because the high tech plants then cost around $1 billion each. Now, new ones cost around $3.5 billion. TSMC stepped in to fill the gap, setting up huge chip factories and taking orders from customers, mainly in the U.S. The result has been the steady growth of chip design companies that never build their own factories. Mobile phone chip developer Qualcomm and graphics chip designer NvidiaÂ are two examples of companies that have been wildly successful, despite not owning their own factories. They farm out production to foundries such as TSMC and UMC.
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Intel INTC.O, the world's biggest   chipmaker, and German industrial conglomerate Siemens   SIEGn.DE will collaborate on developing new technology for   Internet telephony, the two companies said on Thursday.
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The latest technology is on display in Taiwan at the Computex trade show. Mobile products are everywhere--here's what our roving correspondents found.
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Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and AT&amp;T Corp. (TN: Quote, Profile, Research) have signed a research and product development agreement covering Internet telephone technology
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Three more Taiwanese chip makers plan to&#160;spend significantly less money on new factories and equipment&#160;this year as a DRAM (dynamic RAM) glut and uncertainty about the global economy weigh.Lower capital spending forecasts in the chip industry are a sign the global IT industry is on edge about future demand. Analysts have expected DRAM makers to cut back on spending for a long time due to&#160;falling chip prices. Prices for mainstream DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) chips remain below production costs, and most DRAM makers have reported losses for the fourth quarter.Powerchip Semiconductor, Taiwan&#39;s largest memory chip maker, Wednesday said it plans to spend NT$35.1 billion (US$1.09 billion) on new chip factories, technology and production line equipment this year, less than half the NT$86.3 billion it spent last year.Powerchip&#39;s smaller rival on the island, ProMOS Technologies, also more than halved its projected 2008 capital spending to US$800 million, down from US$1.84 billion last year. The company also put the expansion of its fourth 12-inch factory on hold pending a rebound in the DRAM market.United Microelectronics (UMC), the world&#39;s second largest contract chip maker, forecast its 2008 capital spending at US$500 million to US$700 million, down from US$900 million last year.The company&#39;s customers have turned cautious due to global economic worries, said Jackson Hu, CEO of UMC, at an investors&#39; conference in Taipei on Wednesday. The company forecast its chip shipments will decline as much as 15 percent in the first quarter, compared to the fourth quarter of last year as chip demand weakens, particularly for communications chips.Global semiconductor equipment spending is forecast to fall 9.9 percent to US$40.3 billion this year, from US$44.8 billion last year, according to Gartner. The market researcher blamed over-investment by DRAM makers in 2007 for the cutback in semiconductor capital spending this year. Concerns about a U.S. economic recession have also put chip makers in a cautious mood, Gartner said in a report published early this month.&#160;
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IBM , Singapore's Chartered  Semiconductor  and Samsung Electronics   will join forces to develop and manufacture chips using an  advanced processing technology, the companies said on  Wednesday.
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(InfoWorld) - One of Europe's largest chip makers is teaming up with Taiwan's biggest chip packaging and testing company on a joint venture in China, despiteÂ strict regulations regarding chip-related investmentsÂ on the part of Taiwan. NXP Semiconductors, the former chip division of Koninklijke Philips Electronics, and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) on Friday said they signed a memorandum of understanding to form a joint chip packaging and testing venture in Suzhou, China. ASE will take a 60 percent stake in the venture, while NXP will hold the remaining 40 percent. The companies said the deal will only go through if it meets regulatory approval, but they indicated that the Chinese and Taiwanese governments have been cooperative. "We're pleased to be able to strengthen our relationship with ASE through the formation of this JV and appreciate the willingness of governments to help in this regard," said Ajit Manocha, chief manufacturing officer at NXP, in a statement. Taiwan and China remain enemies after splitting in 1949 amid civil war. The islandÂ heavily regulates China-bound chip investmentÂ over fears China could use the technology to bolster its military. Chip makers on the island find the rules a hindrance. But despite the 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. Â
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world&#39;s biggest producer of custom-made chips, on Thursday reported record-breaking revenue for the third quarter, but signaled that the global technology sector might be heading for a slowdown in the fourth
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IBM  and Taiwan's top chip design  firm Mediatek Inc (2454.TW) said on Monday they are jointly  launching a research and development project to develop  ultra-fast chipsets to tap into growth in the consumer market.
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In an announcement before semiconductor engineers in San Francisco this morning, AMD and IBM put forth proof of what could be their breakthrough process - their response to Intel in the race to reduction.  It could pull AMD back even with Intel by 2008, if Intel doesn't respond in the intervening months.
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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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(InfoWorld) - The Chinese government has given Intel permission to build a $2.5 billion chip-manufacturing plant in Dalian, on China's northeastern coast. Intel plans to build a plant that will produce semiconductors, including microprocessors, on 300-millimeter wafers using a 90-nanometer manufacturing process, China's NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) said in an announcement (in Chinese) on its Web site. The plant will have a monthly production capacity of 52,000 chips, it said. The planned plant will be the first constructed by Intel in China, and it will operate along with test and assembly plants in Shanghai and Chengdu, a city in southwestern China. The NDRC announcement did not say when construction will begin on the plant or when it would begin production. Intel declined to comment on the NDRC announcement. "We haven't made any announcements, and we don't plan to," said Chuck Mulloy, a company spokesman. If the NDRC announcement is accurate, the Dalian plant would be a coup for the Chinese government, which has made the development of the country's semiconductor-manufacturing industry a national priority. The most advanced production technology currently used by Intel is a 65-nanometer process, and the company has plans to begin producing chips using a 45-nanometer process later this year. The lower the number, the smaller the size of the smallest feature that can be created on a chip. Moving to a more advanced production process means chips can be produced at a lower cost, since more can be crammed onto a single silicon wafer. More advanced process technologies also generally help to improve performance and reduce power consumption. While a planned plant in Dalian that uses a 90-nanometer process technology would lag several generations behind the most advanced technology used by Intel, the plant would still rank among the most sophisticated in the world. Ben Ames in Boston contributed to this report.
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AMD launches the $185 Personal Internet Communicator(PIC) in partnership with Tata Indicom to tap the Indian market. MUMBAI: The Austin, TX-based chip vendor AMD calls it the 50x15 initiative : the move towards
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(InfoWorld) - About half of the work on Intel's recently announced "teraflop research chip" was done in India, highlighting the country's growing importance to Intel's research and development efforts. Researchers in Oregon and Bangalore designed the programmable chip, which crams 80 cores onto a fingernail-size device that draws just 62 watts of power, said Vasantha Erraguntla, engineering manager at the India Research Center. Erraguntla led the 20-person design team in Bangalore that worked on the logic, circuit and physical design of the chip. Intel first discussed the research processor earlier this month, saying it can perform more than a trillion floating point operations per second, or a teraflop. It doesn't plan to bring that particular device to market, but the researchers in Bangalore are now looking at the implications of putting such a powerful processor into a system. The chip has spurred research projects in the areas of cooling, high-bandwidth interconnects and power management, said Vittal Kini, director of the research center, which was set up in 2004 and is the latest addition to the India Development Center in Bangalore. Besides working on the teraflop chip, some 50 researchers there are working on other areas of circuit and systems research. The Development Center is fast emerging as a key research and design location for Intel. The company has about 3,000 staff in India, of which close to 2,900 are in research and development. Indian engineers work on the design of chips and chipsets, reference designs, system software, and packaging technologies, said Sandeep Shah director of the mobility group at the India Development Center. Indian engineers have full ownership of the development of key Intel chips for the server and mobile market, he added.
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By Rodney Tanaka, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Calif.  Dec. 13--PASADENA -- A local tech company is partnering with IBM to build  chips used in digital cameras and X-ray machines.