In the news

From today's Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ, "Renesas mulls tieup with Taiwan firm":

"Renesas Technology Corp. ルネサステクノロジ, Japan's second-largest semiconductor maker, is mulling a tie-up with major maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to mass-produce next-generation chips, sources said. Renesas is considering outsourcing a large part of its production to the Taiwan company to cut its mounting production costs and instead use more of its financial resources on product development, the sources said Wednesday. The tie-up talks come at a time when other chip makers are gearing up to start mass production of next-generation chips to make digital consumer appliances smaller and help cut their electricity consumption. The development of such chips is expected to lead to the creation of highly functional digital appliances...Through the tie-up, Renesas aims to cut costs that are projected to run into tens of billions of yen to develop production technologies and hundreds of billions of yen more to set up large-scale production lines...Major Japanese chip makers generally engage in the full process from product planning and development to production, but some are beginning to outsource production in an effort to cut costs."