UMC to Make Chips for NVIDIA?

by Anna Filatova
11/30/2001 | 03:22 PM

NVIDIA is currently negotiating very actively the possibility to place an order for the production of its chips by one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers – UMC. Silicon Strategies reports that UMC will produce for NVIDIA the chips used in Microsoft X-box console. UMC is rumored to have already passed NVIDIA’s qualification tests having released a trial supply of these chips manufactured with 0.15micron technology.
This info is especially interesting, because according to some other sources, NVIDIA has been at loggerheads with its primary partner – TSMC, which is at the same time a competitor number one to UMC Company.
Summing up all this info, we can drive the following conclusions:

• NVIDIA will not split with TSMC anyway, because the latter has at its disposal really working production capacities for 0.13micron manufacturing technology. Never mind that NVIDIA is not happy with the size of the available capacities. First of all, UMC is going to have 0.13micron production lines only in the middle of next year. Secondly, TSMC keeps increasing its 0.13micron production, and thirdly, NVIDIA is not the only company willing to use 0.13micron technology. Besides NVIDIA, there is one more much larger customer, VIA (C3/Ezra CPUs), which TSMC doesn’t want to lose.
• The fact that NVIDIA decided to ask UMC for help with X-box chips production shouldn’t be an offence for TSMC, because the 0.15micron production lines of the latter are packed to the full extent (including NVIDIA’s orders). So, they shouldn’t feel offended at all.