Powerchip Technology Corp’s (力晶科技) new 12-inch wafer plant in China is set to start mass production by the end of this year as the company prepares for a potential relisting on Taiwan’s stock market, a senior executive said yesterday.
The plant in Hefei, Anhui Province, is operated by Nexchip Semiconductor Corp (合晶集成), a joint venture between Powerchip and the Hefei City Government.
The 12.8 billion yuan plant (US$1.89 billion) will help ease Powerchip’s capacity constraints and play a major role in its capacity allocation plan, Powerchip Group (力晶集團) chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told Unique Satellite TV yesterday.
“Powerchip has an installed capacity of 100,000 a month [in Taiwan], but is still facing a severe capacity problem,” he said.
Hsinchu-based Powerchip, primarily a maker of driver ICs for LCD panels, plans to boost the Hefei plant’s monthly capacity to 10,000 wafers by the second quarter of next year after producing a first batch of chips by the end of this year.
The ultimate goal is to boost the monthly capacity to 40,000 wafers in 2019 and to 80,000 wafers in 2020, the company said.
The Hefei plant would also help Powerchip make room for Nor flash memory production, Huang said.
The company last week said it planned to return to the NOR flash memory sector to take advantage of the strong market demand.
The Hefei plant would be a major manufacturing site for driver ICs, while Taiwanese production lines would be used to make NOR flash chips, Huang said.
He expects severe supply constraints of NOR flash memory chips to extend into the second half and even into next year as global major chipmakers have exited the market.
Powerchip, originally a major Taiwanese DRAM chip suppler, has transformed itself into a foundry service provider focused on making driver ICs, image sensors and power management chips, as well as DRAM chips.
Net profit last year was NT$6.41 billion (US$211.1 million), or NT$2.97 per share, marking a fourth straight profitable year.
Powerchip shares were delisted from the Taipei Stock Exchange in 2012 as the company ran into financial trouble following a slump in the DRAM industry.
Huang said the company is preparing for a comeback and wants to get its share back on the local stock market in the near future.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure