Qimonda to pull plug on memory chip production in Dresden: sources
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Qimonda, a unit of German semi-conductors giant Infineon, plans to cease production of memory chips at its oldest factory in Dresden, east Germany, from next October.
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AMD has announced that its 65nm fabrication transition is now underway. AMD's goal is to fully convert its Dresden, Germany, fabrication facility to 100% 65nm by the middle of next year, with the first 65nm Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors due in the first quarter.
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Increased demand for memory chips used in computers, portable media players, and other consumer electronic devices helped Infineon TechnologiesÂ offset a first-quarter drop in sales in the German chip maker's communications products.
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The Motley Fool - Today's flash memory chips store as many as 32 billion bits on a single chip. It's an impressive achievement, but manufacturers only have a few more years of squeezing those components into ever-smaller configurations before the whole process becomes either too expensive or physically impossible. That's why today's news from IBM (NYSE: IBM - News), Macronix (Nasdaq: MXIC - News), and Qimonda (NYSE: QI - News), announcing the creation of a new "phase-change" material that could lead to the development of more powerful memory chips, is a big deal.
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LONDON (CBS.MW) -- German memory chipmaker Infineon Technologies cautioned on customer demand for its current quarter after revealing it had been hit by inventory build-up, joining numerous chipmakers who have warned of the same in recent months.
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Chip maker offers few details about its plans for dual-core server processors.
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Scientists have developed an alloy they say can be used to create memory chips more than 500 times as fast as todayÂs flash chips.
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(InfoWorld) - The head of Japanese memory chip maker Elpida Memory held talks with Taiwanese officials last week about incentives for building a chip factory on the island. Yukio Sakamoto, Elpida's chief executive officer met with the company's foundry partner in Taiwan, Powerchip Semiconductor, as part of his visit to the island, but Elpida says it has made no decisions yet, a spokeswoman for the company said Tuesday. Elpida is considering an investment in either China, Japan, Singapore, or Taiwan, and could work with a partner in a joint venture or go it alone, said Tomoko Kobayashi a spokeswoman at Elpida. Powerchip declined to comment. Such a deal would be huge for the winning location, because modern DRAM (dynamic RAM) factories cost around $3 billion and employ thousands of workers. China and Taiwan both have advantages because Elpida already works with partners in both places, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. of Shanghai and Powerchip. Singapore would also rate highly since it's been labeled one of the best locations in the world for a chip plant investment due to its tax breaks and other incentives. Japan would have home field advantage. The DRAM industry is also ripe for new factories. Most companies in the business have invested in non-DRAM production lines in recent years, mainly NAND flash memory, popular in digital cameras, mobile phones, and iPods. But DRAM prices have surged recently due to strong PC sales, and prices are expected to remain strong over the next several months onÂ anticipated PC demandÂ from the launch of Microsoft Windows Vista. In fact, the spot price of the most popular chips, DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) chips, hasÂ surged 15 percentÂ over the past three days, according to DRAMeXchange Technology Inc., an online clearinghouse for the chips.
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Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), China&#39;s largest chip maker, fell short of its bid to turn a profit in 2007, ending the year with a $40 million loss. But that&#160;won&#39;t stop the company from expanding in 2008.SMIC saw revenue of $1.5 billion during 2007, an increase of 5.8 percent over the previous year. But higher sales weren&#39;t enough to offset a slide in DRAM prices and the company ended the year with a loss, albeit one that was slightly narrower than the $44.1 million loss recorded by the company in 2006.SMIC turned in a fourth-quarter loss of $22.2 million on revenue of $395.3 million. By comparison, the company reported a profit of $143,000 for the fourth quarter of 2006, thanks to an exceptional one-time gain from the sale of used equipment.Once seen as a potential rival to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world&#39;s largest contract chip maker,&#160;SMIC has struggled to turn a profit. Part of the problem is that, as the company built a series of new chip plants in China, it turned to DRAM companies for orders in a bid to fill these production lines. But DRAM is a brutal business with razor-thin margins and&#160;recent declines in memory prices&#160;have hurt SMIC&#39;s bottom line.SMIC is trying to wean itself off DRAM as a source of revenue, but the switch to production of more logic chips, which generally command higher prices and have better margins, hasn&#39;t happened fast enough to pull the chip maker out of the red.DRAM represented 23.6 percent of SMIC&#39;s revenue during the fourth quarter, compared to 38.6 percent during the same period last year. By comparison, logic chips represented a greater percentage of SMIC&#39;s fourth-quarter revenue, rising from 57.4 percent in 2006 to 67.4 percent last year.Despite reporting another annual loss, SMIC continues to expand. The company announced plans to build a 200-millimeter production line and a 300-millimeter fabrication plant in Shenzhen, a southern Chinese city that lies next to Hong Kong. Construction will begin during the first half of 2008, the company said.
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More details on Yonah, the company's dual-core notebook chip, will be released this week.
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(InfoWorld) - The investment arm of chip maker Intel said Thursday it agreed to invest $65 million in Powertech Technology, a Taiwanese chip assembler that specializes in flash memory and DRAM (dynamic RAM). Intel Capital said the funds, along with capital from other investors Powertech expects to bring on board, will be used as working capital to support the continued growth of its operations. Intel is an active customer of Powertech, it said in a statement, and led the round of financing for Powertech. The announcement came as no surprise in Taiwan, where Chinese-language media had been reporting such a deal between Intel and Powertech was in the works. The investment is one indication of how competitive the NAND flash memory chip business has become, and the importance of Powertech's services. Intel entered the NAND flash memory fray byÂ partnering with Micron Technology, a deal the two companies announced in late 2005, and started early last year under the name IM Flash Technologies. They entered an already competitive industry that included South Korean heavyweights Samsung ElectronicsÂ and Hynix Semiconductor, as well as NAND flash developer SanDisk. NAND flash chips have become popular thanks to widespread use for song storage in digital music players, including Apple's iPod Shuffle and iPod nano. One bottleneck in NAND flash production is in chip assembly, where companies seal the chips inside protective coverings, the final step in the making of a chip. Powertech specializes in memory chip assembly, including NAND flash memory as well as DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) DRAM chips. The NAND business has hit a few speed bumps recently. The popularity of the chips caused companies to build too many new NAND production lines, causing a glut of chips on the market and sending prices tumbling. SanDisk announced a few weeks ago that it planned to lay off 10 percent of its work force in a bid to remain profitable despite steep price cuts on its chips. The Milpitas, California company said NAND flash memory chip prices have dropped 50 percent in the last two months.
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Becomes the first company to plead guilty to conspiring with manufacturers to fix the prices of DRAM chips in a 2-year probe. WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO: Germany&#39;s Infineon Technologies AG has agreed to plead
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Chipmaker to focus on technology and features instead of megahertz.
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(InfoWorld) - Qimonda, the world's second largest DRAM (dynamic RAM) maker, has expanded a technology and production pact with Taiwan's Winbond Electronics to provide the company with 80-nanometer manufacturing technology. The deal extends Qimonda's strategy of sharing its research and development expenses by licensing out chip manufacturing technology to partners such as Winbond, Nanya Technology, and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. of China. The deals also help Qimonda control costs. The company sources chips from these companies, enabling it to rely on them for a steady supply of DRAM without having to spend billions of dollars on new chip factories. The German company,Â formerly the memory chip divisionÂ of Infineon Technologies, will also continue to source chips from Winbond, it said in a statement. The deal extends a partnership begun in 2002, when Infineon agreed to transfer its 110nm technology to Winbond in return for a portion of its output.
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South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest memory chipmaker, said it would invest some 24 billion dollars in building new chip production lines over the next six years.
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Fujitsu will purchase two chip plants in Japan from Spansion Japan, a flash memory chip maker in which it holds a stake, the companies said Thursday.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Matrix Semiconductor's memory chips have several layers of transistors rather than a single plane.