According to the rumours from Taiwan published by this web-site, SiS wants to outsource the manufacturing of their chipsets made using 0.15 and 0.18 fabrication process. The possible outsourcing may be conditioned by the fact that SiS badly needs to expands its manufacturing facilities, though, they didn’t managed to attract overseas investments earlier this year and now even cannot upgrade their current fabs. Presently SiS produces 26-28 thousand silicon wafers per month, but can make up to 35 thousand units after their fab is expanded.

SiS’ Pentium 4 intended chipsets, Xabre graphics processors and other products developed and produced by Hsinchu-based company are in demand nowadays and sometimes SiS cannot fulfil the orders it receives. Since the problem is well-known and was predicted years ago, about 18 month back analysts considered the possibility to outsource part of SiS’ production to UMC, however, nothing real has been done since then. It seems that now something important may happen finally.

What is a bit ridiculous is that less than two month ago SiS and UMC sorted out the legal dispute, and after that we intended that SiS and UMC could then collaborate (see this news-story) since UMC needs to find additional customers, while SiS needs to sell more chipsets than it is able to produce.

UMC and SiS spokespersons have not confirmed the unofficial information.