Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is to set up the Silicon Intellectual Property Federation which will combine the R&D results of all local chipmakers, quasi-official think tanks and research units to significantly improve the international competitiveness of the local industry. Taiwan’s chip makers are strong in manufacturing expertise and world leaders in made-to-order foundry operations, but lag a long way behind competitors in the US, Japan and Korea in R&D, design and innovation.
The agreement to form the new federation was reached at the just-finished 1999 Taiwan Semiconductor Industrial Strategic Forum. T.Y. Yang, chairman of the Committee for Semiconductor Industry Development and vice chairman of Winbond Electronics Corp, said Taiwan-based manufacturers must team up to increase the value of their products by sharing resources in intellectual property.
He predicted that if Taiwan companies can break through the bottlenecks they face in innovation and R&D, the annual output of the local semiconductor industry could expand to be worth $66bn by 2005, from the current $10bn.
Chen Hsing-hsiung, an official at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), said the federation will make use of research from Taiwan’s universities, the National Science Council, and the ITRI itself, and he expects more chip design houses to be established as a result of the creation of the federation.
