Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技), which primarily makes driver ICs used in flat panels, said it plans to resume production of NOR flash memory chips in Taiwan to take advantage of a supply crunch.
Such a move would make Powerchip the third local company supplying NOR flash memory chips after Macronix International Co (旺宏電子) and Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電).
Powerchip’s announcement was unexpected, as the chipmaker had long suspended production of NOR flash memory chips due to a limited market scope and capacity.
The former DRAM powerhouse has transformed itself into a supplier of driver ICs, image sensors and power management chips after the DRAM industry flopped because of a severe oversupply in 2010.
“The supply of NOR flash memory chips has become tight, because major global suppliers are withdrawing from the market,” Powerchip Group (力晶集團) chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) said in a statement released on Monday.
“Powerchip has decided to re-enter the market, as more customers have requested that we make NOR flash chips for them,” Huang said.
Powerchip has signed initial engagements with customers to supply NOR flash memory chips, Huang added.
The company plans to start production of NOR flash memory chips at a local factory in the second half of this year after a new 12-inch factory in Hefei, China — a joint investment by Powerchip and the Anhui Provincial Government — begins mass production of driver ICs, the statement said.
Powerchip did not provide details about its NOR flash memory chip capacity or manufacturing plan.
The firm is to leverage its experience producing NOR and NAND flash memory chips to rapidly ramp up production, Huang said.
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