Infineon Technologies AG and Taiwan's Nanya Technology Corp (
Infineon, the world's fourth-largest memory-chip maker, and Nanya will build a plant to make 300mm wafers, the companies said at a press conference in Taiwan.
Under the terms of the agreement, Infineon and Nanya "will co-develop advanced 0.09-micron and 0.07-micron production technologies for 300mm wafers starting in October, sharing the development costs," a statement said.
"We have also agreed to set up a 50-50 joint venture for the production of DRAM memory chips and to build a new joint 300mm chip facility in Taiwan."
The first chips would be produced at the end of 2003.
"And in the first stage, production should reach a capacity of approximately 20,000 wafer starts per month by the second half of 2004," the statement said.
Infineon's alliance with Nanya follows agreements with other Taiwan chipmakers such as Winbond Electronics Corp (
"They'll have the capacity and technology to compete with the other groups," said Lloyd Tsai (蔡隆裕), who helps manage about US$77 million in stocks at Invesco Taiwan Ltd (景順投信). ``They can have bargaining power over prices.''
Chipmakers expect to cut production costs by almost a third by using 300mm wafers, which double the number of chips that can be cut from a single piece of silicon. Factories using the newer chipmaking technology cost as much as US$3.5 billion each, twice as much as factories with older technology.
Infineon said it expects to gain a 20 percent share of the US$11.9 billion memory-chip market as a result of the alliance.
Nanya said its share will probably increase to 10 percent from 7 percent now.
``Taiwan is still a very efficient manufacturing base and will stay a high-tech manufacturing base,'' said Harald Eggers, a senior vice president at Infineon.
Nanya's sales in April topped NT$2.3 billion (US$66 million). Its shipments last month to customers with which it has long-term purchase contracts lagged targets by 40 percent, Nanya said.
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