Jan. 2, 2008 – Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. has officially acquired 200mm chipmaking lines from Winbond Electronics Corp., under a deal announced in March.

Vanguard says adding Winbond’s Fab 4 and Fab 5 lines will expand its 200mm output to 1.3M wafers/year, and will push upgrades at its existing Fab 2 to 0.18-0.13μm — the new lines are capable of 110nm-90nm memory manufacturing. The company started process verification at the Winbond lines in 2Q07 and started sending work there in 3Q, spanning 0.2&mum;-0.18μm-0.16μm LCD drivers and 0.15μm CMOS devices, according to Taiwan Economic News.

Industry sources cited by the Taiwan Economic News point out that Vanguard only expects a 10% boost to 1Q08 revenues, since terms of its deal with Winbond included promises for up to 25,000 wafers of memory chips, for which prices have bottomed out. The firm has said, though, that the addition of Winbond’s capacity won’t hurt gross margins, which should increase to about 40%-42%.