Local memory chipmaker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) said yesterday it had exchanged views with state-owned Taiwan Memory Co (台灣記憶體公司) on possible collaboration.
Company spokesman Wilson Wen (溫萬壽) said the Hsinchu-based company was in talks with TMC on a broad range of issues, a stock exchange filing said yesterday.
No substantial conclusions had been reached yet, Wen said.
Winbond shares rallied 6.83 percent to NT$4.69 amid speculation that the chipmaker would supply memory chips to TMC. Winbond produces both commodity and specialized memory chips.
TMC head John Hsuan (宣明智) announced last week that the firm would form a technology partnership with Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc. He said TMC would adopt a business model similar to most other chip designers, which do not operate their own factories.
Separately, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s top computer memory chipmaker, said yesterday it won final approval from a majority of its creditor banks for a six-month rollover on loans totaling NT$70 billion (US$2.09 billion), partly easing the financial pressure on the firm.
Creditor banks, led by Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀), made the decision at a meeting on Monday, Powerchip said in a stock exchange filing.
The chipmaker would have a six-month grace period to repay the principal amount, company spokesman Eric Tan (譚仲民) said.
Powerchip said last month it did not believe TMC would be an ideal partner.
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Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
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INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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