R&D, Memory, China, Asia-Pacific: Better known for the varied and high quality of its silk products, not to mention its immaculately maintained water gardens, Suchow, near Shanghai, will soon be hosting a more modern development as memory chip supplier Qimonda is setting up a memory development centre in this beautiful town.

Qimonda AG, which supplies memory chips, has just announced its plans to set up a new development centre for memory products. Based in Suzhou, 80 km west of Shanghai, the additional development capacities will serve Qimonda’s target to further expand and diversify its product portfolio. This new centre will be installed in the existing facility for the assembly and testing of memory ICs (back-end) in Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP).
The Qimonda Memory Products Development Centre (Suzhou) Co Ltd will be an independent entity wholly owned by Qimonda AG whose total investment is expected to amount to US$20 million. Development Centre activities are scheduled to start from October 1, 2007, together with the hiring of appropriate engineers at Chinese universities. Qimonda’s target is to employ 200 engineers within five years. The Development Centre is planned to complement Qimonda’s existing Development Centre in Xian, also in China, while focusing on the full product development, including product specification, circuit design and application test for computing and consumer memories.

“The new Development Center in Suzhou is another strategic step to expand our activities in the Asian market, which represented more than 30% of Qimonda’s revenues in the last quarter”, said Kin Wah Loh, President and CEO of Qimonda. “Furthermore we expect fruitful synergies with our existing back-end facility in Suzhou to result in cost reductions by sharing existing infrastructure, central functions and expensive installations such as the test equipment.”

* Qimonda is a global memory supplier with a broadly diversified DRAM product portfolio. It has approximately 13,000 employees worldwide and access to five 300 mm manufacturing sites on three continents, operating six major R&D facilities. The company provides DRAM products for a wide variety of applications, including the computing, infrastructure, graphics, mobile and consumer areas.

more info: www.qimonda.com