Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom.
The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement.
It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said.
Photo: Tsai Cheng-min, Taipei Times
As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion in revenue this year, four years ahead of researchers’ expectations, segments “of memory and storage [are] projected to be the fastest growing,” Micron senior vice president for global front-end operations Buddy Nicoson said at the plant’s unveiling ceremony.
“This clearly shows that demand for advanced memory is growing at an unprecedented pace,” Nicoson said. “The launch of Tongluo site symbolizes the flexibility and agility that we bring to meet our customers’ needs.”
“At the same time, Tongluo is a critical part of Micron’s global manufacturing expansion strategy,” he said.
In addition to Taiwan, Micron is expanding capacities across the US, Japan, Singapore and India to build a resilient and flexible global manufacturing network, he added.
The company on Monday moved in the first batch of chip manufacturing equipment to the Tongluo plant, Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光) head Donghui Lu (盧東暉) said.
The new plant plans to hire 1,000 new employees, which would boost the number of Micron’s employees in Taiwan to about 15,000 by the end of this year, Lu said.
The company would continue to improve its advanced DRAM manufacturing and packaging capabilities in Taiwan, with HBM remaining a key focus, he said.
As of January, Micron had invested NT$1.4 trillion (US$43.88 billion) in Taiwan, making the company the largest foreign investor in Taiwan, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said during the ceremony.
That also elevated Taiwan’s role as the largest memory manufacturing hub for Micron in the world, Cho said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS