Samsung Says It Will Expand Chip Factories
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The Samsung Electronics Company, the Korean electronics giant, said Monday that it would invest $23.7 billion in new chip production lines over the next six years.
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Infineon, a No.2 chip producing company in Europe, has decided to expand its automotive and industrial chip division by investing $1billion in a new plant in Malaysia.
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Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. ,  the world's biggest maker of memory chips, said on Monday it  would invest 938.8 billion won ($1.01 billion) to upgrade its  memory chip production lines.
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Samsung Electronics has developed a chip-manufacturing technique able to significantly increase the amount of music, pictures, videos, and other data people can store in future iPods, iPhones, and other devices.The world&#39;s largest memory chip maker showed off a 64Gb multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chip made with an entirely new 30-nanometer production technology. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, and the measure refers to the average size of the smallest features on the chip. The manufacturing breakthrough, which Samsung calls self-aligned double patterning technology (SaDPT), will enable the company to greatly increase the storage capacity of new NAND flash memory chips once the technology is in commercial production.For example, 16 of the 64Gb chips can be combined in a memory card for 128GB of storage space, enough for 80 DVD movies or 32,000 MP3 music files, the company said in a statement.Even more important for users, Samsung was able to make the technology leap without requiring certain expensive new chip making equipment. While moves to smaller production technologies often require investment in expensive new photolithography equipment, the company was able to use current photolithography gear to etch circuits on the silicon wafers. That should ensure low production costs and reasonable prices for end-users.SaDPT technology uses two pattern transfers to create the circuit design of each chip. The first transfer spaces the circuits widely apart, then the second transfer uses that space between the circuits to add another circuit, with the result that the circuitry is more densely packed together.Samsung has applied for 30 patents related to the new 64Gb flash chip, and said it also created a 32Gb chip with the same production technology. The company expects to begin mass production of 64Gb flash chips with its 30nm manufacturing technology in 2009.
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Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., the world's largest maker of memory chips, said on Monday it would invest &#36;24 billion in its semiconductor business by 2010.
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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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Samsung unveiled a new mobile chip set with up to 4GB of storage capacity, potentially eliminating the need for add-on memory cards.
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Samsung Electronics Co. said Tuesday it has developed a more advanced flash memory chip that will allow increased data storage in digital products such as music players.
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SEOUL South Korea&#39;s industrial production climbed in November, the government said Wednesday, as exports of cars, computer chips and cellphones surged.
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Samsung Electronics, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker, expects its handset sales to rise 16 per cent next year to more than 100m units.
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(InfoWorld) - The head of the world's largest contract chip maker said his industry will have trouble maintaining sales and profit growth in the future because the overall chip industry has slowed down and there's a lot more competition. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plans to expand to new markets and find new work in product areas such as chips for mobile phones, digital cameras, and other consumer electronics devices in order to meet these challenges, said Morris Chang, the chairman of TSMC, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The company released information from his speech. Overall revenue growth in the chip industry has slowed to around 6 percent per year between 2000 and 2010, from 16 percent each year prior to 2000, he said. At the same time, more new rivals have entered the contract chip making business. His company will have to find new ways to grow despite these challenges, he said. "Growth opportunities exist in cell-phone applications, game systems, digital TV, LCD displays, power management, MP3 devices, and digital cameras," a paper Chang submitted to the conference reads. Developing closer relationships with the chip design companies that create chips for these kinds of products will be a key strategy for TSMC in the future. TSMC manufactures chips that are designed by other companies, a business model it pioneered. Prior to the Taiwanese company's founding, small chip design firms had to ask Intel, Motorola, and other big chip makers to make their chips, and these companies would only comply if their factories weren't being fully used already. Most small companies didn't have enough money to set up their own chip factory because the high tech plants used to cost around $1 billion each. Now, a new one can cost $3.5 billion. TSMC stepped in to fill the gap, and the result has been the steady growth of chip design companies that never build their own factories. They rely on TSMC or other foundry chip makers, including Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), to manufacture their chips. Mobile phone chip developer Qualcomm and graphics chip designer Nvidia 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. The success of TSMC and UMC has caused a number of new competitors to enter the chip foundry business. IBM, Samsung Semiconductor, and China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC)Â are all examples of latecomers to the foundry business. These new rivals have been able to survive, and in some cases thrive. "The growth of the industry has attracted many companies to offer foundry services. Consequently, competition between these companies increases the potential for commoditization of foundry services," according to Chang's report. He goes on to say that going forward, the best defense for TSMC will be to engage with chip design customers far earlier in the developing stage of their products, and to offer a wider range of production services. TSMC and UMC hold around a 75 percent share of the global chip foundry business, according to investment banking firm Merrill Lynch & Co. Last week, TSMC said itÂ opened its first office Bangalore, India, to find new customers and help existing ones complete their chip designs faster and bring products more quickly to market. Â
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SEOUL Samsung Electronics announced on Monday that it would be investing 25 trillion won in new chip production lines in the next six years, a move that it expects will create 10,000 jobs.
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Samsung has begun shipping samples of a new 8GB NAND flash chip, which could be integrated into phones to eliminate the need for a separate memory slot. This would allow for smaller devices, the company says.
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Cho Soo-in, the chief of Samsungâs memory chip production center, was promoted to head of the companyâs memory chip division.
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South Korea&#39;s Samsung Electronics said Friday it has opened a giant plant at Austin in Texas, to supply US customers with the most advanced memory chips used for various mobile devices.
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Infineon Technologies, the second-largest chip maker in Europe, said Wednesday that it planned to invest about $1 billion in a new factory in Malaysia to expand its automotive chip business and be closer to customers in the region.
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Samsung Group aims to achieve cumulative sales of 200 trillion won in its semiconductor business by investing an additional 25 trillion won from 2005 to 2010.