DRAM chipmaker Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技) yesterday said company president Scott Meikle has resigned, in the latest board shuffle after chairman Charles Kau (高啟全) left early this month for China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光).
Inotera’s board of directors yesterday approved the appointment of Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) as Kau’s successor. The appointment took effect immediately.
Inotera’s board also approved Meikle’s resignation and appointed Rod Morgan as the company’s president. The adjustment is to take effect on Jan. 1.
Morgan, who is a special assistant at Inotera, was previously the vice president of Micron’s procurement division.
Morgan, who joined Micron in 1984, held numerous leadership roles in manufacturing operations.
Inotera is a DRAM manufacturing venture between US memory giant Micron Technology Inc and local DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology.
Meikle yesterday did not disclose his career plans. He said he would continue to dedicate himself to Micron and to the memory industry. Meikle is also a member of the Inotera’s 13-seat board.
Inotera said Meikle has made invaluable contributions to the company over the past five-and-a-half years, including helping it through its challenging transition to 20nm chips.
Inotera plans to fully convert all its production to 20-nanometer chips by the end of the second quarter next year. At end of this year, the chipmaker plans to convert 80 percent of its 30nm chips into 20nm.
To finance the transition, Inotera’s board yesterday approved additional capital expenditures totaling NT$8.1 billion (US$246.6 million) for next year.
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