14 DAY TRIAL // Macronix International is a traditional manufacturer and vendor of non-volatile memory modules including a wide range of NOR Flash and Mask ROM circuits. The company announced that it has entered the known-good-die (KGD for short) market and that it started production and shipments of KGD products to several Taiwanese and foreign clients. Macronix's KGD products will be used in wireless networking setups, flash memory chips and various mobile devices according to the company's chairman Miin Wu, cited by the news site DigiTimes.
While the present production and shipment for KGD products are still low, the company's chairman said that he expects production and sales to go up considerably in the following years. Macronix is not the first Taiwanese major integrated device manufacturer that expands on the KGD market, in fact it follows the Etron Technology company that already took steps to develop a strong presence on the KGD market. According to DigiTimes, "Wu explained that KGDs can help shrink product sizes and reduce the number of times needed for packaging, which lowers the cost of production". The expansion on the KGD market seems to be good for Macronix as the company posted a financial report that says that its second quarter revenues went up by 12 percent, despite an increase in price pressure, while the gross profit jumped an impressive 39 percent as compared with the same time period last year. "Operating income doubled from NT$241 million in second quarter 2006 to NT$505 million. Net income reached NT$802 million, more than doubled the NT$232 in the second quarter of 2006".
Most of the sales registered by the Macronix company were of ROM memory chips that accounted for 45 percent of the net sales which means "an increase of 45% on-year, and 11% sequentially, with strong demand in game cartridge sales being the primary driver of our year-over-year sales, according to the company". Flash memory chip sales were slightly lower, of 42 percent of the total sales, with an increase of 10 percent on year. "The products made by 0.15 micron, 0.13 micron and 0.10 micron of the advanced process technology collectively accounted for 72% of net sales revenue for the second quarter of 2007. Capacity utilization rate decreased to 94% from 102% on-year, but increased from 92% in the previous quarter due to the expansion of production capacity in Fab 2 during the second quarter of 2007".
According to Wu, more than 50 percent of the company's ROM production will consist of ROM products made with the 100nm fabrication technology because of a strong demand on the consumer electronics market and that will prompt the company to increase the number of wafers for 100nm ROM to 30,000 per month.