Sun Partners With Taiwanese Chipmaker
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TSMC will manufacture Sun's latest UltraSparc processors.
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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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Cypress Semiconductor Corp of the US said Monday it has chosen Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) to be among its primary foundry partners for its next-generation static random access memory (SRAM) products.
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(InfoWorld) - Taipei may have to rethink its China investment policies in the wake of an offer by a foreign group to buy the world's largest chip assembly company, Taiwan's Advanced Semiconductor EngineeringÂ (ASE). Part of the attraction of the deal is that by changing ownership, the company would cease to be Taiwanese, and therefore be allowed to invest in China as it pleases, pundits say. The trouble for many Taiwanese chip makers in recent years has been the tight leash Taipei keeps on technology investment bound for political rival China. Taiwan and China remain enemies after splitting in 1949 amid civil war. The island fears China could use chip technology to bolster its military capabilities against Taiwan. Despite the strained relationship and tough investment rules, China remains by far the favored destination for Taiwanese investment due to their shared language and culture, and China's lower costs and huge potential market. The deal for ASE, a $5.5 billion offer from a consortium led by the private equity firm Carlyle Group, would be a huge positive for ASE, transforming it into a foreign entity and allowing it to build chip assembly plants in China, according to Fubon Securities. Currently, ASE has no chip assembly investments in China, despite the fact that earlier this year Taipei gave a green light to chip makers to invest in low-end chip assembly. Despite the apparent opening, not a single application has been approved by Taipei, and companies remain unsure of how to proceed with such investment. Analysts argue that the approval process remains very much subject to politics in Taiwan, due mainly to the rivalry with China. A foreign takeover such as the one Carlyle and ASE are discussing would remove such political pressures and put China investments on the fast track. Indeed, theÂ embattled former chairmanÂ of chip foundry giant United Microelectronics, Robert Tsao, was quoted by local media as saying the possibility of such buy-outs excited him, and that UMC would welcome similar offers. Tsao is a prime example of the difficulties Taiwanese tech companies and executives face when investing in China. He and another key UMC executiveÂ resigned early this yearÂ after beingÂ indicted by Taiwanese prosecutorsÂ over their alleged role in the establishment of Chinese chip maker, He Jian Technology (Suzhou). The court case is still being heard. The government began investigating UMC over He Jian a few years ago, and fined UMC for failing to apply for permission to work with He Jian. Taipei has also leveled fines on UMC and He Jian executives. Tsao and his colleagues maintain that they have done nothing wrong. For its part, the government plans to review the possible ASE deal over its potential impact on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, since the company would likely be de-listed if it is purchased by Carlyle. Economics Minister Chen Ruey-long on Monday said Taipei needs to keep on top of the issue in case it becomes a trend, because such purchases could have long term effects on the economic development of the island. The review has nothing to do with China policy, he said.
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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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Santa Clara, CA; November 22, 2004 -- Sun Microsystems and AMD are celebrating the one-year anniversary of their strategic partnership.
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(InfoWorld) - Taiwanese chip assembler Advanced Semiconductor EngineeringÂ (ASE) plans to invest $60 million in a low-end chip assembly company based in China. ASE's board of directors approved a plan to invest in Global Advanced Packaging Technology, a Shanghai company, ASE said Thursday. ASE will need approval from Taiwanese regulators to move forward on the investment due to strict regulations meant to keep Taiwanese technology from ending up in missiles and other military hardware aimed at the island by rival China. Taiwan and China remain enemies after splitting in 1949 amid civil war. Despite the strained relationship andÂ tough investment rules, China remains by far the favored destination for Taiwanese investment due to their shared language and culture, and China's lower costs and huge potential market. Currently, ASE has no chip assembly investments in China, despite the fact that earlier this year Taipei gave a green light to chip makers to invest in low-end chip assembly. Although the government announced it would allow such investments, not a single application has been approved by Taipei, and companies remain unsure of how to apply to regulators. Analysts say that the approval process remains very much subject to politics in Taiwan, due mainly to the rivalry with China. In related news, ASE said it will form a special committee to evaluate aÂ possible $5.5 billion dealÂ to be bought out by a consortium led by The Carlyle Group. So far, ASE has only received an indication of interest from Carlyle, not a formal offer. The deal could transform ASE into a U.S. company, where Carlyle is based, thereby allowing ASE to invest in China without asking Taipei for permission. China's growing electronics industry requires chips, and chip assembly factories nearby can help ensure quick placement inside gadgets. Carlyle's interest in ASE is also a sign of the times. There have been a string of private equity deals in the chip industry recently. A few months ago, Carlyle was part of a team that sealed a deal to buy Freescale SemiconductorÂ for $17.6 billion, while Koninklijke Philips ElectronicsÂ sold a majority in its chip unit to another group for around $10.6 billion. Â ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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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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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Tuesday said it has entered a manufacturing agreement with Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore.
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The Taiwanese government added several companies to a&#160;growing list of WiMax wireless broadband technology partners&#160;on Monday, including Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Sprint Nextel.Taipei has been putting together incentive packages for multinationals to entice them to build WiMax research and development centers in Taiwan, work on development projects with companies from the island, and to make the island a part of the standards-making process for the technology, which delivers high speed Internet service over the airwaves.Intel was an early champion of WiMax as a replacement for the Wi-Fi wireless networking standard uses for Internet access in coffee shops, airports and other places in much of the developed world. The chip giant has already signed a similar agreement with Taiwan, and is working with Taiwanese computer parts makers to ready the technology for inclusion in laptop PCs next year.&quot;We believe partnerships between Taiwan WiMax players and global leaders will speed up the development of WiMax technologies,&quot; said Steve Ruey-Long Chen, Taiwan&#39;s economics minister, in a speech at the 2007 WiMax Forum, which opened in Taipei on Monday.The agreements are memorandums of understanding, nonbinding pacts to work together to promote WiMax. Most signatories of such agreements have already pledged to invest in Taiwan or work with Taiwanese companies.&quot;Nokia Siemens Networks already has partnerships with Taiwanese companies. This memorandum of understanding provides the framework to extend those partnerships,&quot; said Marko Tiesmaki, head of business development in broadband wireless access at the company.Alcatel-Lucent has already pledged to establish a WiMax lab in Taiwan, said Patrick Plas, chief operating officer of the company&#39;s GSM/WiMax business. Its memorandum signifies its openness to working with Taiwan to promote WiMax technology, he said.The pacts are part of Taiwan&#39;s plan to become one of the largest producers of WiMax equipment in the world. The island is already positioning itself to be one of the fastest adopters of WiMax wireless broadband Internet connectivity outside of North America. Officials see the technology as a good way to spread broadband Internet access throughout the island, which includes remote mountain villages and sparsely populated outlying islands.Taiwan often signs such agreements with multinationals to stimulate technology development on the island. Such deals can encourage companies to build technology-specific R&amp;D centers on the island through the use of incentives such as tax-free status, research grants, rent-free space in science parks and more.Other companies have also signed memorandums of understanding with Taiwan, including Starent Networks, NEC, Nortel Networks, and German WiMax tester Rohde &amp; Schwarz.Last week, Taipei pledged to spend $1.22 billion to build out Taiwan&#39;s WiMax network over the next five years, including $1 billion for a fiber optic backbone running the length of the island and $220 million for WiMax base stations and other equipment.The island has been promoting its M Taiwan project, or Mobile Taiwan, to speed up Internet mobility and encourage companies on the island to invest more in building products for WiMax, 3G (third generation) mobile telecommunications and other wireless technologies. The government has granted WiMax licenses to six operators, and some of them plan to start offering services as early as next year.
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The IBM announcement is being made in collaboration with Intel. Under an agreement reached two years ago, the companies have worked together to design and manufacture blade servers.
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A new semiconductor alloy jointly developed by IBM and its partners will spur the development of faster and smaller memory chips. The companies say the advancements would lead to smaller chips than currently possible with flash memory.
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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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Sun is upgrading its lower-end UltraSparc-based servers--but the systems will arrive with chips introduced three years ago.
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InfoWorld - Texas Instruments, the world&#39;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.
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Sun and Texas Instruments were among the companies saying they could do more with allies during the EPC Global conference. By Elena Malykhina.
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InfoWorld - Sun Microsystems has tapped Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to manufacture its latest UltraSparc processors, Sun said Tuesday.