TMC signs up ProMOS as manufacturing partner

This is according to Gartner Inc. analyst Andrew Norwood, who said in a report that "For the moment, TMC has a production partner but no products."

TSMC is just getting off the ground. The government of Taiwan proposed in March to help bail out the island's DRAM industry, including the consolidation of DRAM makers into TMC.

Japan's Elpida Memory Inc. is the technology partner for TMC. Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. is part of the mix. But some DRAM makers have balked, namely Nanya Technology Corp.

ProMOS is playing a role within TMC. "ProMOS has scaled back its manufacturing capacity during the past year because of market conditions, and the loss of Hynix Semiconductor as a technology partner has left the company using the old 72nm process and the main product line of 512Mbit DDR2 devices," the Gartner analyst said. "The company already does foundry DRAM production for a number of companies, so this move will not be a big change for the vendors."

- Mark LaPedus
EE Times