Micron To Build Chip Production Plant in China
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Micron ranks fourth in the Chinese chip market, trailing Hynix, Samsung and Infinitron, according to a report from the consulting firm CCID.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Engineers Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge had drafted a business plan that they promised would roil the U.S. microchip industry. Using blueprints they allegedly stole from their Silicon Valley employer, the men proposed to reproduce a super-fast chip in China at a much lower cost.
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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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Taiwan&#39;s largest memory maker, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., said it is ready to seek approval from the Taiwanese government to build an 8-inch wafer fab in China.
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Impacted with Chartered and Samsung IBM is teaming up with four other chipmakers to develop manufacturing technologies for semiconductors that shrink the average circuit feature to 32 nanometers. The alliance, which is aimed at containing the spiraling cost of building bleeding-edge chips, also involves Chartered Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics, Infineon Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor.â¦
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Chipmaker to focus on technology and features instead of megahertz.
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(InfoWorld) - Qualcomm and Samsung Investment VentureÂ have each invested $8 million in Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Co. (AMEC), a Chinese company that plans to develop and sell equipment used to manufacture semiconductors. The investments were part of $43 million raised by AMEC in recent months. In October 2006, the company announced it had raised $35 million from several investors, including Goldman Sachs. AMEC plans to develop semiconductor manufacturing equipment for 65nm and 45nm production processes, hoping to tap China's growing semiconductor manufacturing industry. AMEC is led by Chairman and CEO Gerald Yin, a Chinese semiconductor executive who formerly worked for chip equipment supplier Applied Materials.
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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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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. ,  the world's number two maker of microchips for personal  computers, has sealed a deal to supply China's second-largest  PC maker with chips, scoring its latest victory in a market  share battle with bigger rival Intel .
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The chipmaker appears to have met its most recent deadline for production of the smaller-featured chips.
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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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A 40-nanometer chip production technique is key to making chips smaller, faster, more powerful, and cheaper to produce.
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Infineon Technologies AG, Europe&#39;s second-largest maker of semiconductors, plans 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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Infineon on Wednesday said it would invest $1bn in a new semiconductor plant in Malaysia as it stepped up production of chips used in automotive and industrial power applications.
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Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China&#39;s largest chip maker, has signed a deal to license a 45-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process from IBM, the company said Wednesday.The licensing agreement gives SMIC rights to use IBM&#39;s 45nm bulk CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) process technology, the Chinese chip maker said in a statement. That number refers to the average size of the smallest features that can be created on a chip, and smaller is generally considered better.The 45nm process licensed by SMIC will allow the company to produce sophisticated communication chips, such as 3G (third-generation) mobile chip sets, as well as chips for graphics and consumer applications, the statement said.At present, 45nm technology is the most advanced process available for commercial semiconductor production, and chip makers are just starting to use the technology. Terms of the deal, which helps SMIC keep pace with the 45nm efforts of rival contract chip makers, were not disclosed.
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(InfoWorld) - South Korean memory chip giant Hynix SemiconductorÂ on Wednesday denied local media reports that it planned to move its operations to China. A problem finding land in South Korea for a new factory to make chips on 12-inch (300 millimeter) wafers apparently turned into speculation that the company, frustrated, would simply move to China, where it already operates a joint venture chip factory. A South Korean newspaper cited local politicians saying Hynix would make the move. But the DRAM (dynamic RAM) maker says it's not going anywhere, and the rumor had been blown so far out of proportion that it put out a statement to clarify the issue. "There were some local news reports that we're planning to move our operation to China. ... Hynix is not reviewing that option," said Kim Mi-Young, a Hynix representative. The company started looking for a new site for the planned factory after South Korea's environmental protection agency turned down a request to build it near its Ichon complex in Kyonggi Province, for fear it might contaminate a nearby river. Hynix considered another location, Chongju, where it already owns a piece of land, but ran into further trouble. Its land there is too small for the planned facility, and the constant press coverage over the environmental issue caused landowners in Chongju to speculate Hynix might come calling, and raise their prices accordingly. Now, the company says Chongju is too expensive. It still does not know where it might build the new factory.
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Foundry partner gears up for second-generation 90nm Efficeons