Mobile phone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) plans to launch its first semiconductor chip facility in the US midwest with support from a state transition assistance package from the Indiana Economic Development Commission, the company said on Tuesday.
MediaTek unveiled the new talent development initiative during the SelectUSA Investment Summit in National Harbor, Maryland, following in the steps of silicon wafer manufacturer GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), which on Monday announced an investment of US$5 billion for an advanced 12-inch factory in Texas.
MediaTek said in a statement that it intends to form new research partnerships with Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, to collaborate on developing engineering talent, and research on next-generation computing and communications chip design.
Photo: RITCHIE B. TONGO, EPA
The center would be on the university’s campus, the company said.
It has been working with US universities for more than a decade, but this is the first time it has made such a strong commitment that includes a new MediaTek design team on campus, the firm said.
MediaTek operates eight offices in the US, it said.
“We believe strongly that being in Indiana means we will have access to some of the best engineering talent in the world,” MediaTek USA president Lawrence Loh (陸國宏) said in the statement. “In the post-[COVID-19]-pandemic world, top candidates tell us they want to be closer to home, near family, and they want to have a real house and great schools. Indiana offers all that and more.”
MediaTek said it aims to employ as many as 30 top engineers in West Lafayette by 2025 and up to 10 graduate student interns, with the first interns expected to join the new chip design center in May next year.
Globally, MediaTek invested more than US$3.5 billion in research and development last year.
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
RSS