GlobalFoundries acquires troubled DRAM chip maker
updated 11:15 pm EST, Thu February 23, 2012
Move expands manufacturing, Chinese reach
Industry sources are reporting that former AMD manufacturing arm GlobalFoundries has agree to buy out ProMOS Technologies, a troubled RAM and chip manufacturer with facilities in Taichung, Taiwan. The move should help GlobalFoundries extend its influence with Chinese IC designers and other global companies that rely on integrated circuits but lack fabrication facilities of their own, DigiTimes reports.
GlobalFoundries will pay between $700 million and $1 billion for ProMOS, which had been delisted from the Taiwan stock market due to its financial problems and had recently announced that it would focus on vertical-market memory and foundry contracting for non-memory products. ProMOS' Taiwan facility will now join with GlobalFoundries' existing facilities in Germany and Singapore, along with a New York-based fab plant opening near the end of the year.
ProMOS will now be able to continue serving customers over the next year or two as it transitions to a GlobalFoundries properly, where it is expected it will focus on IC fabrication as well as its current DRAM business. Its current facility is capable of producting 60,000 12-inch wafers per month.
The company is expected to develop partnerships with China- and Taiwan-based IC designers who mostly use industry leader TSMC (currently with 55 percent of the market, and a potential supplier for Apple's own chips) and United MicroElectronics Corporation (UMC). GlobalFoundries and UMC have roughly equal shares of the market at about 12 percent each. [via DigiTimes]
