Dec. 6, 2001 – Taipei, Taiwan – In order to accelerate the development as a wafer foundry service provider, Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. will drop the manufacturing of its DRAM chips in 2002, executives of the firm said.

Since the beginning of 4Q01, all of Vanguard’s 0.25-micron production capacity has been transferred from memory to logic chips. The firm’s 0.18-micron production will also be switched to the foundry business in 3Q02, reported Financial Times.

Vanguard is now able to offer wafer foundry services in 0.25-, 0.35-, and 0.5-micorn based technologies and it expects to upgrade the technology to 0.18-micron in 2002. It will withdraw from the DRAM market by producing flash products in 3Q02.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) expects to help Vanguard develop as a specialized IC foundry plant and the second foundry partner of TSMC, Financial Times reported.

Meanwhile, TSMC’s 0.18-micron and below production is running at full capacity for the moment, as TSMC’s largest client nVIDIA has fared well in sales of its graphic chips recently. TSMC can only offer about two thirds of the capacity service, however.