Foxconn rumored to back TMC (Taiwan Memory Company)

[saaya]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090417PB202.html

Dont know if you guys heard of it, it hasnt been posted here... there are several memory makers in taiwan, and they are all in deep shoite since the dram market was not quite profitable in the past years and then got knocked out by the economy crunch. Instead of pumping shedloads of cash into them to keep them alive the taiwanese government said they want to merge ALL taiwanese memory makers into one company and will then bail them out. They seem to look at TSMC as an example of what they want the memory makers to be.

There are now rumors that FOXCONN might back this group of memory makers and invest in them, which would provide foxconn with a cheap supply of dram, if all works out. owning a part of a memory power house would definately have advantages when building netbooks, laptops, vgas, handhelds and game consoles... and there is no better time to invest then now, assuming the economy will pick up from here.

[zanzabar]

who all was absorbed into the tmc, and dose this mean that direct board memory could come back, so we get good speeds/latency on netbooks or mini itx

[saaya]

nah, dont think so, redundancy is more importan than a tiny speed bump...thats why mem went off board to begin with
and those markets are all about money and power consumption so again, dont think there will be any effort in making them faster :D

TMC, if it happens, will probably be:
PSC/Powerchip
Nanya
Winbond (still around!)
Promos
Rexchip

it will work in alliance with Elpida/kingston and/or Micron

[Serpentarius]

i still cant imagine how investing in RAM companies could benefit Foxconn ...

sayaa, got any ideas? i recall mobo normally use built-in ram for .. bios?

or maybe Foxconn is planning to come out with their very own RAMs?

[saaya]

foxconn is doing hundreds of products, boards is just a tiny fraction of their overall product range.
there is foxconn memory, there are heatsinks, vgas, cases, psus, netbooks, nettops, htpc, routers, switches, modems, mobile phones...
but most is not branded foxconn and made for other companies who then sell it as theirs or part of their product.

i doubt foxconns interest in TMC is diectly related to mainboards...
its probably mostly motivated by patriotism since foxconn is from taiwan, so they want to support the local mem makers, and some movitation maybe as an invesment, and some as in actually using TMCs product.

but im just guessing... i only read news about this on digitimes...

[Serpentarius]

patriotism .. that make sense ..
or some direct order from their gov

i didnt knew foxconn made a variety of products ... the only thing found in my country is their mobo :P

[zanzabar]

foxconn makes the ps2 ports (i assume that its their best seller) and the plastic covering the intel socket to keep the pins from bending

[Sparky]

You see those weird little dooflickies in prebuilt machines? Random brackets in laptops? Odds are, those are foxconn built. I notice that a lot.

[saaya]

foxconn makes the whole cpu socket, actually thats how they started business, they used to be the only supplir for cpu sockets a long time ago.
cpu sockets, memory slots, pciE slots, atx power plugs, sata plugs etc... laptop plugs and connectors, tv, audio... all kind of cables and connectors are made by foxconn
laptop psus as well, and they dont just make the ps2 ports, they built the entire ps2, ps3, xbox, xbox360 and even nintendo wii and nintendo ds etc plus psp... i know a gy from the psp department actually :)

so like i said, they do all sorts of things, just not branded as foxconn...

they are kinda like siemens in germany, general electric in the us or samsung in korea