Nanya says 12-inch fab capacity for fabless customers sufficient

Nanya Technology is confident that it will have enough capacity for its IC design customers, according to company president Charles Kau.

Nanya currently runs a 12-inch wafer fab capable of producing 55,000 units per month. Of the capacity, 40,000 wafers will be manufactured using 30nm process technology by the end of third-quarter 2013, Kau said. The remaining 15,000 units will be rolled out using 42nm, Kau added.

Nanya is also gearing up for transition to 20nm process technology, Kau indicated. Nanya will continue to partner with Micron Technology, but through a technology license, instead of jointly developing process nodes for DRAM products. The revised partnership with Micron will save at least NT$5 billion (US$172.5 million) a year in R&D expenses, according to Kau.

Kau claimed that Nanya's available capacity for foundry orders placed by its IC design customers will be sufficient to satisfy their needs.

Kau made the remarks following recent reports indicating that several Taiwan-based niche-market memory suppliers, including Elite Semiconductor Memory Technology (ESMT) and Etron Technology, were mulling the possibility of jointly taking over Powerchip Technology's P3 12-inch wafer fab, which will be put on sale at the end of January.

ESMT has issued a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) disclosing plans to acquire a portion of the production lines and related facilities located at Powerchip's P3 plant to ensure the foundry capacity it needs.

Both ESMT and Etron are among Nanya's contract customers, which also include US-based Integrated Silicon Solution (ISSI).

ISSI has made an equity investment in Nanya, according to a company statement in September 2012. Building on ISSI's foundry partnership with Nanya, this strategic investment allows ISSI to gain certain volume guarantees and access to more advanced process nodes for specialty DRAM production.

Nanya has reiterated plans to gradually phased out from the commodity DRAM chip market. Nanya has cut capacity for PC-use DRAM, and plans to discontinue supplying the commodity chips to clients by mid-2013.