Sony, Qimonda to Jointly Produce DRAM for Specific Products

The Qimonda division of Infineon, which currently produces DRAM in fabrication facilities in the US, Germany and soon China, announced today it will be partnering 50/50 with Sony in the creation of a DRAM production facility specially tailored to specific consumer devices.

Qreatic Design, as it will be known, will not only expand Qimonda's bold use of the letter "Q" but will give Sony a new option for developing conventional, random-access memory for its own devices.

But as the new venture's executives made clear to Asian news sources today, Qreatic won't be in the conventional DRAM business - instead, it will develop embedded memory systems for consumer- and graphics-oriented devices. Without saying so explicitly, they presumably mean Sony devices.

Thus today's move provides more evidence that Sony may be radically rebuilding its consumer electronics lines, starting from the ground up. A typical Sony partner in a memory venture would be Toshiba, with which it's already developed embedded and conventional DRAMs. Toshiba and Sony already pioneered 90 nm and 65 nm DRAM fabrication processes overseas, and have added NEC to the mix for a 45 nm partnership.

And despite the fact that Sony and Toshiba are bitter rivals in the high-definition format wars, Toshiba remains Sony's IP partner - with IBM - in the Cell BE processor that powers the PlayStation 3. Sources believe those two companies continue to pursue the possible sale to Toshiba of Sony's production rights to Cell.

So a Sony / Qimonda partnership would be something new and untried for both companies. Infineon has long signaled its intention to reduce its 85% stake in Qimonda to 50% or below; that stake it doesn't retain would be wholly-owned by Qimonda's Virginia-based management. Its key rival in the CE DRAM space is Hynix Semiconductor, so the Qreatic partnership could give Qimonda a leg up in achieving parity there.

But what is it they'd create, or "qreate," together? There's a growing sense that Sony wishes it could do two big products over again, if it could: Blu-ray and PS3. While Sony - the world's #9 semiconductor manufacturer - probably has no intention of pulling out of the fabrication business by name altogether, it may try a leaner, more "asset light" strategy of pursuing newer designs faster by relying more on partners, now including Toshiba and Qreatic.

Such a partnership could give Sony the resources it would need to retool its consumer "graphics product" line (read: high-definition) and consumer entertainment lines in time for their respective next generations, perhaps by the holiday season of 2010.

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