Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (
With the second factory going into full operation, "Powerchip further proves that it is the most cost-effective DRAM [dynamic random access memory] maker among its peers," a local cable TV channel quoted chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) as saying at a launch ceremony held in Hsinchu yesterday.
Powerchip plans to spend a total of NT$60 billion (US$1.9 billion) at the plant, located in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (
To further trim costs, Powerchip will cooperate with its long-term partner Elpida Memory Inc of Japan in developing more advanced technologies to lower the line-width of its chips to under 110 nanometers per unit at the new fab, company president Brian Shieh (謝再居) said in the statement.
Shrinking the size of the chips allows manufacturers to fit more of them onto a single wafer, leading to a reduction in costs.
Huang said that his company will carry on with its original plan of investing another NT$20 billion to build more 12-inch fabs in Taiwan.
Powerchip told investors in April that it plans to build a new fab every two years until 2010. The company plans to spend US$1.3 billion on new facilities this year.
Construction of its third fab is scheduled to begin by the end of this year at the earliest in Hsinchu -- if the government overcomes the land-acquisition problem, Powerchip spokesman Eric Tang (譚仲民) told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Compared with its rapid expansion at home, the chipmaker's ambition to tap into the fast-growing Chinese semiconductor market has been frustrated by its failure to gain government approval to build a factory in China using less advanced technologies.
"We haven't heard any good news from the government [about the Chinese investment]. No progress has been made yet," Tang said.
Late last year, Powerchip and smaller rival ProMOS Technologies Inc (
The government has slowed efforts to ease the ban on new investments in China after Beijing enacted the controversial "Anti-Secession" Law in March.
Powerchip shares have fallen around 15 percent to NT$22.1 since the beginning of the year on the nation's over-the-counter market, or GRETAI Securities Market (櫃台買賣中心), due to falling chip prices.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”