DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) plans to develop new high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips tailor-made for edge artificial intelligence (AI) devices such as PCs, mobile phones and robots in an effort to differentiate itself from its rivals.
The HBM3, HBM4 and HBM2 used in AI servers are not the company’s target market, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told reporters in Taipei yesterday.
The company’s focus is “customized” HBM products for edge AI devices, given its smaller capacity scale and limited resources, Lee said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
The company plans to roll out its first customized HBM product by the end of next year, in collaboration with chip designer Piecemakers Technology Inc (補丁科技) and chip packaging and testing service provider Formosa Advanced Technologies Co (福懋科技), he said.
Nanya Technology is also teaming up with a logic chip supplier to complete its HBM product, which stacks advanced DRAM chips on a small logic chip. Lee declined to disclose the name of the company’s logic chip partner.
“Under the current market situation, Nanya Technology is unlikely to compete with those chipmakers by capacity, cost efficiency or investment scale, especially those from China. The company needs to differentiate its products and to find its value when the world ushers in the AI era,” Lee said. “Customized HBM products are critical for Nanya Technology’s growth.”
The company aims to boost the contribution of DDR5 chips to about 30 percent of overall DRAM production this year. A majority of its DRAM capacity is for DDR4 chips.
Commenting on competition from a Chinese rival, Lee said the impact is “enormous” for the whole industry, not just on Nanya Technology.
“Without the huge capacity from that Chinese chipmaker, the low-power DDR4 and DDR5 market would have recovered,” he said.
With plentiful capital injection from the Chinese government, China’s Changxin Memory Technologies Inc (長鑫存儲) has become a major memory supplier in the world with capacity seven times bigger than Nanya Technology.
Lee said DRAM demand has improved since China launched new subsidy programs on electronics purchases last quarter.
He said the supply of DRAM chips for non-AI devices is dwindling, as major players such as SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co are allocating more capacity for HBM chips used in servers.
Including Micron Technology Inc, the world’s top three producers’ inventory situation is also improving, he added.
These signs are positive for the industry, with a price rebound likely in the second half of this year, he said.
The company’s board of directors yesterday decided not to distribute cash a dividend this year, even though its losses shrank to NT$5.08 billion (US$154.9 million) last year from NT$7.44 billion in 2023.
The board approved capital expenditure of NT$19.6 billion this year to fund capacity buildup for its second-generation 10-nanometer-class process technology, denoting a process between 10-nanometers and 19-nanometers.
Leading Taiwanese bicycle brands Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) and Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) on Sunday said that they have adopted measures to mitigate the impact of the tariff policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US announced at the beginning of this month that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on imported goods made in Taiwan, effective on Thursday last week. The tariff would be added to other pre-existing most-favored-nation duties and industry-specific trade remedy levy, which would bring the overall tariff on Taiwan-made bicycles to between 25.5 percent and 31 percent. However, Giant did not seem too perturbed by the
AI SERVER DEMAND: ‘Overall industry demand continues to outpace supply and we are expanding capacity to meet it,’ the company’s chief executive officer said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported that net profit last quarter rose 27 percent from the same quarter last year on the back of demand for cloud services and high-performance computing products. Net profit surged to NT$44.36 billion (US$1.48 billion) from NT$35.04 billion a year earlier. On a quarterly basis, net profit grew 5 percent from NT$42.1 billion. Earnings per share expanded to NT$3.19 from NT$2.53 a year earlier and NT$3.03 in the first quarter. However, a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar since early May has weighed on the company’s performance, Hon Hai chief financial officer David Huang (黃德才)
NVIDIA FACTOR: Shipments of AI servers powered by GB300 chips would undergo pilot runs this quarter, with small shipments possibly starting next quarter, it said Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which supplies artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp chips, yesterday said that AI servers are on track to account for 70 percent of its total server revenue this year, thanks to improved yield rates and a better learning curve for Nvidia’s GB300 chip-based servers. AI servers accounted for more than 60 percent of its total server revenue in the first half of this year, Quanta chief financial officer Elton Yang (楊俊烈) told an online conference. The company’s latest production learning curve of the AI servers powered by Nvidia’s GB200 chips has improved after overcoming key component
UNPRECEDENTED DEAL: The arrangement which also includes AMD risks invalidating the national security rationale for US export controls, an expert said Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) have agreed to pay 15 percent of their revenue from Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chip sales to the US government in a deal to secure export licenses, an unusual arrangement that might unnerve both US companies and Beijing. Nvidia plans to share 15 percent of the revenue from sales of its H20 AI accelerator in China, a person familiar with the matter said. AMD is to deliver the same share from MI308 revenue, the person added, asking for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The arrangement reflects US President Donald Trump’s consistent effort to engineer
RSS