MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is to create a new TV chip business group in as it moves to consolidate MStar Semiconductor Inc (晨星半導體) after clearing the final hurdle from China to proceed with the NT$112 billion (US$3.65 billion) merger.
Hsinchu-based MediaTek’s announcement came after Chinese Ministry of Commerce in February lifted its years-long ban on the company’s full integration with MStar, a deal that was announced in 2012.
In August 2013, China approved MediaTek’s acquisition of MStar on the condition that the two fabless semiconductor companies continue to operate independently for three years amid concerns that the merger would hamper competition in the Chinese market.
China is the last country to give its nod to the deal after South Korea, Germany, the US and Taiwan.
MediaTek commands about 50 percent of China’s mobile phone chip market, while MStar is the world’s biggest TV chip supplier.
“The regrouping plan is part of the company’s broader restructuring efforts,” MediaTek deputy spokesperson Jessie Wang (王巧潔) told a media briefing at the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
“The regrouping will not have any impact on shareholders’ interests,” Wang said.
Based on the company’s plan, MStar is to be divided into three parts — TV chips, set-top box chips and touch sensor design.
MStar and MediaTek’s TV chip design teams are to be integrated in January next year to form a new TV chip business group.
MediaTek has two other business groups: wireless, the company’s core business, which develops mobile phone chips; and intelligent, which designs emerging chips for automobiles, artificial intelligence, application-specific ICs and Internet-of-Things.
MStar’s set-top box chip team is to join MediaTek subsidiary Ili Technology Corp (奕力).
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
Germany is to establish its first-ever national pavilion at Semicon Taiwan, which starts tomorrow in Taipei, as the country looks to raise its profile and deepen semiconductor ties with Taiwan as global chip demand accelerates. Martin Mayer, a semiconductor investment expert at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), Germany’s international economic promotion agency, said before leaving for Taiwan that the nation is a crucial partner in developing Germany’s semiconductor ecosystem. Germany’s debut at the international semiconductor exhibition in Taipei aims to “show presence” and signal its commitment to semiconductors, while building trust with Taiwanese companies, government and industry associations, he said. “The best outcome
RSS