Taiwan-based Winbond Electronics has recently landed niche memory module orders from Qimonda, which were originally manufactured at Qimonda's soon to be closed 8-inch fab in Richmond, US, according to sources at Winbond.

Winbond is planning to manufacture the orders at its 12-inch fab and since the orders are mostly for high gross margin items, the outsourcing is expected to boost the company's overall gross margin.

Currently, Winbond's 12-inch fab can manufacture around 20,000 wafers per month, all of which are supplied to Qimonda for standard DRAM. Initially Winbond will make some adjustments to fit the new orders into the current 20,000 units capacity but will consider expanding capacity in the future.

Winbond noted that its future direction will slowly turn to niche market products or else DDR3. DDR2 will be the company's last choice of product.

Qimonda's 8-inch fab is scheduled to close before the end of January 2009.

By: DocMemory
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