Local memory chipmaker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) yesterday said it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Japan’s top memory company, Elpida Memory Inc, to supply memory chips for PCs, game consoles and digital TVs that handle massive graphic processing.
Under the terms of the MOU, Winbond will also secure next-generation technology from Tokyo-based Elpida to manufacture graphics double-data-rate (GDDR) memory chips and other special memory chips, company spokesman Wilson Wen (溫萬壽) said by telephone.
“Elpida will become our new technology source after our partner Qimonda AG stopped developing and providing next-generation GDDR technology,” Wen said.
Winbond hopes to make GDDR chips using more advanced technologies than the 70-nanometer and 65-nanometer technologies from Qimonda that it is using in a pilot run, he said.
“More importantly, we will be allowed to make our own-brand GDDR chips using Elpida’s technology in the future, which will bring extra business for us,” Wen said.
The partnership with Elpida will help Winbond expand into new and less volatile businesses from its standard PC memory business — commodity dynamic random access memory (DRAM) — which accounted for one-third of its NT$5.69 billion (US$176 million) in revenues last quarter.
GDDR chips, which are incorporated into graphic cards, are designed to handle demanding graphic processing at high speeds.
From the first quarter of next year, Winbond will supply a small volume of GDDR chips to Elpida, Wen said.
In a rarely seen move, Winbond raised NT$5.2 billion (up from an earlier estimate of NT$3.1 billion), or 68 percent of its capital spending for this year, to partly fund the purchase of new equipment for manufacturing GDDR chips.
Elpida’s partnership with Winbond came after the Japanese chipmaker inked an agreement with local DRAM chipmaker ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) last week to outsource production of the latest generation of mass-market memory chips, known as DDR3, on its technologies.
Winbond shares surged 6.15 percent yesterday to close at NT$7.25, out-performing the benchmark TAIEX’s nearly 1 percent rise.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS