Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) yesterday said a foreign memory chipmaker had expressed strong interest in helping Taiwan develop and entrench dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology locally.
Speaking at a media luncheon, Yiin said he was briefed by Taiwan Memory Co’s (TMC, 台灣記憶體公司) designated chief John Hsuan (宣明智) about the progress in seeking foreign technological partnership.
Yiin did not disclose the name of the foreign company.
Backed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), TMC is concurrently talking with Elpida Memory Inc in Japan and Micron Technology Inc in the US.
Hsuan, honorary vice chairman of United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), said on Tuesday he expected to reach a concrete decision within a month.
Yiin yesterday said a local manufacturer of DRAM chips had also indicated willingness to provide research and development personnel to TMC.
Yiin offered no names either, but said TMC would be selective in choosing local partners.
Two of the smallest local DRAM companies may opt to partner with TMC, company officials said yesterday, Bloomberg reported.
“We would like work with Taiwan Memory and we could try to rent or sell our factory to it,” said Wilson Wen (溫萬壽), executive vice president of Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子).
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) also doesn’t rule out partnering with TMC for production, Chief Financial Officer Jessie Peng (彭卓蘭) said.
Yiin yesterday offered firm support to Hsuan, who said on Tuesday that the TMC was a revitalization plan for the DRAM industry, rather than a consolidation or merger plan as many investors and industry analysts had speculated.
The minister used building blocks as an analogy, saying that the local DRAM industry needed to build a solid foundation deeply rooted in its own proprietary technology, and could not take shortcuts by purchasing capacity that it cannot manufacture itself.
“With TMC’s revitalization plan and DRAM technology taking root in Taiwan, the local memory chip industry shall be a formidable force against its Korean counterpart,” Yiin said.
Pundits have expressed doubts about the effectiveness a meager NT$30 billion (US$870 million) in government capital would have on saving the ailing industry and have viewed the TMC incorporation as introducing competition rather than cohesion.
In response, Yiin said, “corporate executives need to reflect on the sequence of events that led their companies to such a demise and assume responsibility.”
He said again yesterday that it was not the responsibility of the government to save private enterprises and that the MOEA is stepping in to salvage the DRAM industry for the nation, not rescue individual companies.
As to disparaging remarks made by Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體) chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁), Yiin said that companies could submit individual “technology upgrade” proposals to the Industrial Development Bureau and apply for bank loans, and that he never referred to Huang as a “fat cat.”
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by