Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s second-largest computer memory chipmaker, said yesterday it had changed its name to Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技), effective immediately.
The Hsinchu-based company said in a filing to the Taipei Stock Exchange that the name change had been approved by shareholders at the annual general meeting on May 26 and approved by the Hsinchu Science Park Administration on Monday.
The company said it would still trade its shares on the over-the-counter GRETAI Securities Market under the code number 5346.
“This new name will not affect the substance of our company. Our legal entity will remain the same except for this name change,” Powerchip said in a separate statement.
Powerchip said last week that its revenue skyrocketed 440.09 percent to NT$8.14 billion (US$250.4 million) last month from a year earlier and soared 423.27 percent to NT$33.96 billion in the first five months.
The global DRAM market is expected to grow 78 percent this year thanks to strong PC demand and rising DRAM prices, market researcher Gartner said last Thursday.
Meanwhile, Rexchip Electronics Corp (瑞晶電子), a DRAM joint venture between Tokyo-based Elpida Memory Inc and Powerchip, said yesterday that revenue last month grew 126.63 percent year-on-year to NT$4.59 billion and increased 164.01 percent to NT$21.37 billion between January and last month.
Smaller memory chipmaker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) also posted increases of 109.29 percent year-on-year, with last month’s revenue reaching NT$2.86 billion, an increase of 112.35 percent year-on-year to NT$12.59 billion in the first five months of this year.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts