Despite of relatively disappointing results revealed by market analysts on Tuesday, Nvidia Corp., the world’s largest designer of graphics processing units (GPUs), is reportedly boosting production orders at its two main manufacturing partners Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics Corp.
Throughout the Q1 2008 Nvidia contracted TSMC to make 50 thousand wafers using 65nm process technology, whereas UMC landed orders for 7 – 9 thousand of wafers from the graphics chip developer. Citing anonymous market watchers, China Economic News Service reports that in Q2 2008 the fabless semiconductor designer will order 60 thousand wafers from TSMC and 10 – 12 thousand wafers from UMC.
Depending on chip’s die area, one 300mm wafer can fit from about 100 very high-end to 800 entry-level die candidates.
(Full article ‘Nvidia Believes in Further Growth of Graphics Processor Market’)
Mobile computers may carry powerful graphics adapter, but this makes them heavy and bulky, which automatically reduces popularity of such mobile computers. However, ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, Asustek Computer and Fujitsu Siemens plan to enable high-performance graphics processing on notebooks with the help of external graphics cards.
Over a year ago – in early 2007 – Asustek Computer, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of computer components and hardware, unveiled its XG Station which integrated a fully-fledged graphics adapter into an external box that could be connected to a mobile computer using Express Card interface. Even though the product has never made it to the market, the concept itself appeared to be pretty popular.
(Full article ‘AMD, Asustek, Fujitsu Siemens Prepare External Graphics Cards for Laptops’)
Advanced Micro Devices on Monday unveiled its first “highly-efficient” AMD Opteron processors with four processing engines. The new chips feature lowered power consumption, but may not necessarily offer unprecedented performance-per-watt ratio due to relatively low clock-speeds and disputable way of measuring power consumption. Still, they provide low-power quad-core AMD chip options to the company’s clients.
“Our new Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processors were designed to help datacenter managers who see power consumption and virtualization as the keys to solving their overall performance equation,” said Randy Allen, corporate vice president and general manager, server and workstation division, AMD.
The new chips for dual processor (DP) machines from AMD are quad-core Opteron models 2344 HE (1.70GHz), 2346 HE (1.80GHz) and 2347 HE (1.90GHz), whereas for multi-processor (MP) machines AMD unveiled quad-core 2346 HE (1.80GHz) and 2347 HE (1.90GHz) chips.
(Full article ‘AMD Releases Its First Low-Power Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE Chips’)
Qimonda AG, a leading supplier of memory products, and Centrosolar Group AG, a leading German solar company, this week signed a contract to jointly build, equip and operate a solar cell manufacturing plant. As a result of the agreement, Centrosolar will be able to create additional solar cells using modern technologies, whereas Qimonda will be able to turn its scrap silicon substrate into revenue.
The joint venture will produce solar cells based on silicon and will be owned 49% by Centrosolar and 51% by Qimonda Solar GmbH, a 100% subsidiary of Qimonda AG. In the planned cooperation, Qimonda will contribute its existing know-how in silicon-based mass production as well as important access to silicon supply. Centrosolar will contribute its expertise with solar systems and the sales and distribution of solar modules.
(Full article ‘Centrosolar and Qimonda to Jointly Manufacture Solar Cells’)
Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips, on Tuesday said it would co-operate with chief rivals Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to develop next-generation, larger silicon wafers to boost efficiency in chip manufacturing.
Samsung said in a filing that it would work with US-based Intel, the world’s top maker of semiconductors, and Taiwan’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to help migration of manufacturing standards from the current 12-inch silicon wafers to 18-inch discs that would yield more than double the number of chips.
The South Korean company said the co-operation plan called for a first pilot line to be operable by 2012.
The world’s largest chipmakers have been exploring the move to pizza-sized silicon wafers to help them grab market share as demand surges for gadgets such as Apple’s iPod.
“Increasing cost due to the complexity of advanced technology is a concern for the future,” Mark Liu, TSMC’s senior vice president of advanced technology business, said in a statement.
“Intel, Samsung, and TSMC believe the transition to [18-inch] wafers is a potential solution to maintain a reasonable cost structure for the industry,” said Liu.
The size of the wafer is critical to make production more efficient.
(Full article ‘Intel, Samsung team up for next-gen silicon wafers’)