Micron Technology Inc, the largest US maker of computer-memory chips, and five other manufacturers must face a class action lawsuit over antitrust claims, a federal judge ruled.
US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in San Francisco approved the case as a class action on Monday, said Tony Shapiro, a lawyer representing 11 companies that filed the suit in 2002. The companies are suing on behalf of thousands of computer-repair shops and manufacturers that purchased chips from 1999 to 2002.
"Our claim is that prices to direct purchasers were artificially increased as a result of competitors communicating with each other," Shapiro said in an interview on Wednesday.
In addition to Micron, other companies facing the class action lawsuit are Tokyo-based Elpida Memory Inc and NEC Corp, and Taiwan-based Winbond Electronics Corp (
Three companies originally named in the suit, Samsung Electronics Co, Infineon Technologies AG and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, agreed last month to pay a combined US$160 million to resolve claims they conspired to drive up the price of computer memory. The settlements were the first stemming from civil lawsuits filed against memory makers claiming computer companies overpaid for DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, in the US.
Samsung and Hynix Semiconductor Inc, both based in South Korea, and Germany's Infineon, have paid US$645 million in fines as part of a separate Justice Department criminal probe of price fixing.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to