|
 |
|
|
|
Infineon chief sees China as strategic
|
Thursday, February 27, 2003
Infineon Technologies' chief executive said Thursday (February 27, 2003) that transferring advanced technology to China was the right thing to do, especially since the Chinese would likely catch up on their own.
Passing through Bangkok on his way back to Munich, CEO Ulrich Schumacher sat with reporters for a few hours to lay out the German chip maker's strategy in Asia and answer questions about the future of Promos Technology, a joint venture it runs with Mosel Vitelic Inc. that is floundering because of acrimony between the parent companies.
Even as that partnership crumbles, however, Schumacher said his company is committed to fostering new ties with Taiwanese and Chinese chip makers and using those relationships to take advantage of increasing demand in the Asia Pacific region, especially in China.
Schumacher said China would be at the center of driving chip demand in Asia over the next several years and a factor in the company's Asia Pacific revenue growing from about 30 percent of total revenues to nearly 45 percent in the next few years.
Acknowledging the uncertainties of the Chinese market, including intellectual property protection, copycat business models and other pitfalls, Schumacher said companies still need to push into the market, even if the ground seems to shift constantly.
“China is a big question mark. Is it the market of the future? Is it the enemy of the future? Will these people kill you if you help them develop an industry? No one has a clear understanding of what is going to happen,” Schumacher said. “But one thing is clear. You can't ignore them. Somehow you have to be part of the game.”
Schumacher took exception to the notion that China should be brought along slowly and denied the most advanced chip manufacturing technology that other countries possess.
Currently, through a largely voluntary pact called the Wassenar Agreement, most countries do not import the most advanced chip-making tools into China. Recently, the cohesiveness of the agreement has been slipping, pitting more ardent supporters, such as the US government, against some governments in Europe that are more lax about granting export licenses for the specialized tools.
“All this discussion about whether you should just transfer older technology and just let them do foundry with it just doesn't work,” he said. “Effectively, China needs to be up to speed just like every other region. If you look, for example, at SMIC, they are starting with 0.14-micron and they will have 0.11-micron technology soon. If you know you cannot avoid that, and it doesn't make sense to avoid that, then it is better to join and to help.”
Over the next few years, Infineon will ramp up its workforce in China to about 2500 people, from just a few hundred today. At least 1000 of those will be engineers, tasked to developing firmware for wireless products and doing back-end design verification.
Schumacher also said Infineon would build, “a major back-end facility in this region.” He declined to say where. “We have to almost triple the production volume of DRAM chips at the back-end. Today, we have the capacity for about 500 million to 600 million pieces and we have to go up to somewhere around 1.5 billion pieces,” he said, noting that it will be part of a push to collectively control 30 percent of the DRAM market with partner Nanya Technology Corp. of Taiwan. They now control nearly 20 percent.
By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved
|
|
|
|
