작년 Wired 지에 잘나가는 기업으로 소개되었던 엔비디아(Nvidia 주로 그래픽용 칩을 만듭니다. Xbox 에 들어가고요.)...음 경영주가 중국계였던 것 같은데 TSMC 보다는 IBM 을 선호하는 것처럼 보이게 되었군요.


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IBM, 엔비디아 신형 그래픽칩 제조 수주


    (아몽크<美뉴욕州>=연합뉴스) 세계 최대의 컴퓨터 제조업체인 IBM은 26일 대만의 TSMC를 제치고 미국 엔비디아와 신형 컴퓨터 그래픽 칩 제조를 위한  다년 계약을 맺었다고 밝혔다.

    이번 계약의 규모는 공개되지 않았으나 세미코 리서치의 조앤 이토우  시장분석가는 "수억달러"로 추정했다.

    엔비디아의 데렉 페레스 대변인은 세계 최대의 그래픽 칩 제조업체인  엔비디아가 지난 5년간 TSMC로부터만 제품을 공급받아 왔다며 이전 제품들은 계속  TSMC로부터 공급받을 예정이라고 말했다.

    smile@yna.co.kr
(끝)

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IBM to Make Chips for Nvidia, Taking TSMC Business
Wed Mar 26, 2:45 PM ET  Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!
 


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp said on Wednesday it will make a next-generation graphics chip for Nvidia Corp., winning business away from Nvidia's long-time partner, Taiwan's TSMC.

 

Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia had previously turned only to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., or TSMC, the world's largest contract chip manufacturer, to produce the graphics chips used in Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox (news - web sites) video game console, personal computers, laptops and workstations.


TSMC declined to comment directly on the deal, but said in a joint statement with Nvidia that it remained the primary manufacturing partner for the company.


"This is not in response to anything TSMC has done," Michael Hara, Nvidia's head of investor relations, told Reuters. "We're going to be a much bigger, multibillion dollar business, and realistically no one foundry can service that."


Hara declined to go into specifics on the first product IBM is producing except to say that it will be a new product that will update an existing part currently on the market.


News of the IBM-Nvidia deal came late in the Taiwan stock market's trading day and analysts said the market did not fully digest it. TSMC's Taipei shares rose 0.86 percent, against a 0.06 percent fall in the TAIEX share index. In New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) trading, however, shares fell 45 cents or over 5.5 percent to $7.64.


Shares in IBM were off $1.87 or 2 percent at $81.59 in afternoon trade on the New York Stock Exchange, while Nvidia shares were up 44 cents or 3 percent at $14.46 on Nasdaq.


Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang has in the past praised IBM's chipmaking abilities but has also stressed that the company would stay with TSMC.


In early March, TSMC reported strong February sales and said it was poised to reverse a slump. Financial analysts there attributed the strength of the February numbers in large part to new product launches from Nvidia.


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The Nvidia deal follows a similar IBM pact with Xilinx Inc. , which was a prime customer for world No. 2 contract chip maker United Microelectronics Corp. of Taiwan, or UMC.


Armonk, New York-based IBM, the world's largest computer company, would make the new chip for Nvidia in its state-of-the-art, $2.5 billion East Fishkill, New York chip plant, IBM said on Wednesday.


IBM is trying to fill its plant with orders from outside companies as it brings the facility into production this year.


Terms of the deal were not disclosed. IBM plans to start making the Nvidia chip this summer.


Nvidia's Hara also said that Nvidia had not decided exactly which products each foundry would produce and how much of the total work each would be assigned as yet.


"We'll evaluate each and every product that comes that we're going to do," he said. "We don't have a hard and fast formula for that today."


TSMC Chairman Morris Chang said last week he considered IBM to be a competitor, surprising some industry watchers who did not usually consider the two to be in the same field.

 



"(The deal is) positive at the margin for IBM -- the foundry business is a focus for investors this year -- we have concerns about how attractive this business is over the long term," brokerage Bear Stearns said in a note Wednesday.

Until late last year, Nvidia had settled into a regular pattern of announcing and then quickly releasing a new generation of chips every six months, which had allowed it to keep the performance crown away from rival ATI Technologies Inc.

But that pattern was broken in 2002, when Nvidia unveiled the GeForce FX line as much as three months later than some had expected. The highest-end chip in that line, the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, began appearing in retail just this month.

One European financial analyst said the deal means IBM may be using its in-house know-how to edge out firms like TSMC and UMC, which design no products of their own and only manufacture on contract to other semiconductor companies.

"Sometimes they (chip designers) run into a bottleneck and need a little outside help," the analyst said. "You can no longer separate process technology from design technology."