Company Profile: Macronix

Company
Macronix International Co., Ltd.

HQs and offices
Hsin-chu, Taiwan R.O.C. as well as old Fab 1, Fab 2, Fab 5 and test building, offices in Milpitas, CA, Wemmel, Belgium, Aschheim-Dornach, Germany, Kawasaki, Japan, Sha Tin, Hong Kong, SuZhou City and Shenzhen, China, Seoul, Korea, and Singapore

Date founded
December 1989

Funding round
$30 million in September 1989 before the launch of the company now public on the Taiwan stock market

Current capital
NT$18,8 billion, MegaChips Corporation being main owner with 2.5% of shares

Revenue
Revenue was NT$34.2 billion in 2017. It was NT$3.236 billion for the month of August 2018, an increase of 6.2% from the previous month and decreasing 5.9% Y/Y. Accumulated consolidated net sales for January to August 2018 were NT$24.223 billion, an increase of 24.3% compared to the same period of NT$19.490 billion in 2017.

In 2FQ18 flash and ROM represent 74% (an increase of 35% Y/Y and of 4% Q/Q) and 17% of the global sales (an increase of 44% Y/Y and 24% Q/Q) respectively. Foundry business group products for other chip makers accounted for 9% of net sales, an increase of 26% Y/Y and 9% Q/Q.

Main executives
Miin Wu, chairman, CEO and co-founder (the other one left the company), number one employee of the company, has been formerly with Intel Corp., VLSI Technology Inc., Rockwell International and Siliconix Inc., and has over 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He is also chairman of Macronix’s subsidiary Mxtran Inc. He received his Master degree in Material Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Dr. Chih-Yuan Lu, president since 2007, has been the president of Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp., a professor in National Chiao Tung University, and a researcher in AT&T Bell Labs.

Dang-Hsing Yiu, SVP and CMO, held a variety of responsible positions in the company including VP (1990-1995), SVP (1995-), COO (1998-2003), head of integrated solution group (2003-2006) and CMO (2007-). Before joining Macronix, he served at IC design companies including VLSI Technology Inc. and also founded a start-up Dynasty Technology Inc.

Number of employees
4,100
CEO Wu remembers that, when he started the company, USA was creative but not able to compete with Japan for quality manufacturing. He also thinks that Taiwanese workers cannot compete with Japanese ones in term of discipline. “I don’ wanted to depend on people.” That’s why he said Macronix was the first company fully computer controlled.

Fab
• Fab 1: 6-inch fab, 40,000 wafers per month
• Fab 2: 8-inch fab, 50,000 wafers per month
• Fab 5: 12-inch fab, 20,000 wafers per month (capable capacity being 50,000)

Products

• Serial NOR flash products from 512Kbit to 2Gbit densities
• NAND flash (SLC and serial) and e•MMC next year or at the beginning of next one at 1GB to 8GB.
• ROM Business, XtraROM products with 32-nanometer process

Macronix has more than 7,400 patents and is dedicating on average 20% of its annual revenue to R&D in recent years. The firm is working since 12 years with IBM on phase-change memory.

Price trend
Wu told us that the price of all memories is going up and down. He saw SLC prices decreasing following the decrease of the cell phone market. He thinks that 3D NAND in more effective and price/bit will be going down. But he said that demand of NOR is strong and will not be replaced by NAND, cheaper but less reliable.

OEMs
Nintendo, Foxconn, Renesas

Target market
Computer communications, consumers, automotive, industrial and medical

Competitors
Macronix is far behind the leaders of NAND flash in the world being in order Samsung, Toshiba, WDC, Micron, SK Hynix and Intel.
In China NAND flash, there are Tsinghua Unigroup, with a majority stake in Western Digital, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) and XMC.
Key players operating in the global NOR flash market include Cypress Semiconductor, Micron, GigaDevice Semiconductor (Beijing), Macronix, Winbond, Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage, Toshiba Memory, Intel, Samsung, Seagate, SK Hynix, LAPIS Semiconductor, Integrated Silicon Solution, and Eon Silicon Solution.
With Macronix, Winbond is the only other flash manufacturer in Taiwan and also in serial NOR flash.