Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Infineon Technologies AG and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) announced that they decided to combine their efforts in the development of new technologies for the production of integral schemes from 300mm wafers, 65nm and 45mn manufacturing process. The deal is expected to speed up the introduction of the new manufacturing technologies for semiconductor production. As a result, the above mentioned companies will be able to start using 0.065micron technology for chips production in 2005 and 0.045micron technologies – in 2007. Although AMD, Infineon and UMC are going to use these technologies independently from one another they will be tested on UMC’s fab in Hsinchu.

I would also like to stress that this example of the joint efforts in semiconductor business is far not the only one. Take for instance, Agere, LSI Logic, Motorola, NEC, Philips and STMicroelectronics, which have been working closely with TSMC for quite a long time on the introduction of 0.09micron technology.

AMD, Infineon and UMC have been friends for pretty long time already. This way in the end of the year 2000, Infineon and UMC started working on a joint fab in Singapore using 300mm wafers. This fab belonged to UMCi joint venture and was expected to start working in Q4 2003. A bit earlier this year AMD and UMC disclosed a similar agreement about a joint fab, too. The venture of these two companies based also in Singapore and called AU Pte.Ltd. should begin producing 0.065micron semiconductors from 300mm wafers in mid 2005. Besides that, UMC Is going to start manufacturing 0.13micron processor for AMD very soon.

In conclusion I would like to point out that UMC’s policy has become very successful recently, even more successful that that of another Taiwanese semiconductor giant, TSMC. According to the latest news, UMC might finally manage to outpace TSMC in terms of production volumes. Especially, bearing in mind that TSMC’s major partner, NVIDIA, reduced its orders placed with TSMC. No doubt that the support from AMD and Infineon will do UMC only good.