Taiwan-based foundry service providers have cut their prices for wafers built on mature node processes to reflect lower production costs, according to sources at IC design firm. The move is also aimed to encourage customers to build inventory, the sources said.
Some fabless IC firms tend to accept their foundry partners' low-price offerings in consideration of their long-term relationships, the sources indicated.
Chip inventories throughout the supply chain have actually been lowered to safe levels, the sources said. However, companies hold a wait-and-see attitude rather than restocking because of an uncertain business outlook, the sources pointed out.
Taiwanese foundries drop prices by 10-15 percent
Posted on Tuesday, January 03 2012 @ 20:44 CET by Thomas De MaesschalckDigiTimes received word that Taiwanese foundries have cut their prices for wafers on mature node processes by 10-15 percent to reflect lower production costs. I'm not sure if 40nm is considered mature, but 28nm definitely isn't so the news is unlikely to result in lower prices for AMD's or NVIDIA's upcoming GPUs.
