TAIPEI, Taiwan — United Microelectronics Corporation, a leading global semiconductor foundry, yesterday held its 2014 Japan Technology Forum to showcase the company's numerous advantages offered to Japan based semiconductor companies looking to strengthen their global competitive position.
UMC's highlights include a broad range of process technology solution positioned to enable the IoT (Internet of Things) era, as well as the foundry's unique open collaboration approach that provides flexibility to offer time and cost saving benefits whether customers are fabless, IDM or system companies.
Yen Po-wen, CEO at UMC said, “The evolution of the horizontal fabless/foundry IC model over the years has led to a much more streamlined supply chain. Under UMC's open ecosystem, we have taken this approach a step further to serve all types of foundry customers, from those requiring direct IC process porting to customized foundry services or full one-stop turnkey solutions.”
“UMC acts as the primary hub to engage with its supply chain partners, so that Japan-based system companies or fab-lite IDMs have the convenience of using UMC as their single point of contact for their IP, mask, technology, manufacturing, or backend test and packaging needs. This IDM-plusSM model acts like an IDM within UMC, but with risks and costs shared throughout the supply chain instead of one company like a traditional IDM, allowing Japanese IC companies to lower their own cost, engagement effort, and time-to-market.” Yen added.
CEO Yen continued, “UMC has also expanded and reinforced its service offerings beyond traditional consumer end-user devices to include automotive and industrial applications such as MCU and power management. We are suppliers to several leading global automotive chip makers, including successful experience with under-hood applications. We look forward to bringing our knowledge and manufacturing excellence for these applications to Japanese customers as well.”
