ProMOS Technologies and Silterra Malaysia have announced the successful completion of the first joint technology development project to bring Silterra's 0.13- and 0.11-micron High-Voltage (HV) process technology for small-panel LCD driver IC applications to ProMOS's 12-inch fabrication facilities in Taichung, Taiwan. The technology is now in the pilot-run stage ready for customers' tape-out, and is on track for mass production starting fourth quarter of 2011.
This project marks the first step of the long-term strategic partnership between ProMOS and Silterra to leverage on each other's strength to bring together ProMOS's 12-inch production scale and advanced manufacturing capabilities and SilTerra's advanced HV technology to enable the fast growing smart phone market.
According to Gartner, the smartphones market is forecast to be around 450 million units this year and expected to double to 900 million units by 2014. Another important trend in smart phone market is screen resolution. The most popular screen resolution for today's smartphone is HVGA and WVGA and this is rapidly transitioning to WSVGA and HD. Both the accelerated volume and the demand for higher resolution screens are driving the demand for more advanced process nodes and larger wafer capacity.
"In our efforts to diversify business portfolio, we have identified mobile applications, particularly smartphones, as the key market we would like to engage," said ProMOS chairman and president ML Chen. "Small-panel LCD driver IC is, of course, a vital component for smartphones and Silterra is one of the global leaders in foundry services for this product. I am very excited that, with the successful execution of technology transfer, we have reached the first major milestone of our continuous process of business diversification."
"We are delighted to partner with ProMOS to bring together Silterra's award-winning advanced high-voltage technology and ProMOS's advanced 12-inch capacity and manufacturing capability to the smart phone market. This project is a significant breakthrough for SilTerra as it enables us to continue to deliver new innovations and capacities to our customers to win in the market. In addition, it also gives our engineers the necessary exposure and training in advanced 12" capabilities," said Kamarulzaman Mohd Zin, CEO of SilTerra Malaysia.