Officials from memory chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday confirmed that they were in talks with US-based computer giant International Business Machines (IBM) concerning a license for chip manufacturing technology.
Early next year, a team of Nanya Technology engineers will begin working with technicians at an IBM lab in Burlington, Vermont, on developing specialized manufacturing technology that will allow Nanya to carve chips at 0.14 microns -- over 100 times smaller than a strand of human hair.
Nanya's discussions with IBM are focused on 0.11, 0.09 and 0.07 micron technology, which should take care of Nanya's technology needs through 2004, analysts said.
Such agreements are a positive note in what the Semiconductor Industry Association called the worst year ever in the sector.
The slump has been particularly difficult for Taiwanese memory chipmakers. The price of industry standard 128 megabit DRAM memory chips has been below the cost of production for some time.
Since then, the nation's six DRAM makers have racked up losses totaling US$1.23 billion, including Mosel Vitelic Inc's (茂矽電子) US$434.8 million, Nanya's US$217.4 million, Winbond Electronics Corp's (華邦電子) US$188.4 million, Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp's (世界先進) US$142 million, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp's (力晶半導體) US$139.1 million, and ProMos Technologies Inc's (茂德科技) US$110.1 million.
With the holiday season lifting personal computer sales, Nanya's revenues surged. The firm reported a near 70 percent leap in month-on-month revenue in November.
As sales surged, so did Nanya's stock price. Its shares rose nearly 42 percent in December, from NT$17.3 per share to NT$29.7 yesterday.
Nanya officials credit the surge to its technology partnership with IBM and a decision to develop a special kind of memory chip used in PCs called DDR (double data rate) memory.
IBM is one of only two multinational chip companies ranked among the top 30 in terms of revenue that will actually expand production this year. Sales in the chip industry are forecast to decline by over 33 percent to US$152 billion from a record high US$227 billion last year, according to the market research firm Dataquest.
IBM Microelectronics, the chip division of IBM, will grow by 3.9 percent. By contrast, analysts believe revenue at Intel Corp, the largest chipmaker, will drop by over 22 percent.
The second key decision this year for Nanya was to begin working with DDR memory, which was untested in the market. An industry group was backing DDR memory chips for use with high performance desktop computers with CPUs running at 1 gigahertz or higher.
It also said DDR could replace a more expensive memory designed by Rambus Inc.
Nanya holds an 18 percent share of the world market for DDR memory and the company says it will shift all production to the chips next year.
As the chips gain popularity, Nanya expects its entire capacity to account for only 10 percent of world demand. The company is already shipping the latest version of DDR memory chips, called DDR 333, and is working on the next generation of DDR memory, DDR 400, with IBM.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS