Winbond Electronics Corporation () is a

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

-based corporation founded in 1987. It produces

semiconductors A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping levels ...

and several types of

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

s (ICs) including

dynamic random-access memory Dynamics (from Greek language, Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power (disambiguation), power") or dynamic may refer to: Physics and engineering * Dynamics (mechanics), the study of forces and t ...

static random-access memory Static random-access memory (static RAM or SRAM) is a type of random-access memory (RAM) that uses latching circuitry (flip-flop) to store each bit. SRAM is volatile memory; data is lost when power is removed. The ''static'' qualifier diffe ...

, serial flash,

microcontrollers A microcontroller (MC, uC, or μC) or microcontroller unit (MCU) is a small computer on a single integrated circuit. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable input/output peripherals. Pro ...

, and Super I/O chips. Winbond is the largest brand-name IC supplier in Taiwan and one of the biggest suppliers of semiconductors worldwide.

History

Winbond was established in 1987 in

Hsinchu Science Park The Hsinchu Science Park (HSP; ) is an industrial park complex that originated as one campus straddled Hsinchu City, Hsinchu County, Chunan and Tongluo, later expanded to cover six campuses across Taiwan. It was established by the government of ...

in Taiwan. Its founder came from the

Industrial Technology Research Institute The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI; ) is a technology research and development institution in Taiwan. It was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Hsinchu, Hsinchu City, Taiwan, with branch offices in the United States, U.S., ...

. From 1987 to 1988 J.J Pan and Partners designed and constructed a fabrication plant known as IC Wafer Fab I Plant. This facility would produce 6 inch wafers. It was designed and constructed in 14 months. Later in 1989 to 1992, J.J Pan and Partners built a second fab for Winbond called IC Wafer Fab II Plant. In 1992 Winbond joined the Precision

RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...

Organization and licensed HP's

PA-RISC Precision Architecture reduced instruction set computer, RISC (PA-RISC) or Hewlett Packard Precision Architecture (HP/PA or simply HPPA), is a computer, general purpose computer instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard f ...

architecture to design and manufacture chips for

X terminal X, or x, is the twenty-fourth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ex'' (pronounced ), plural ''exes''."X", ' ...

s and printers. Winbond acquired affiliated chipset maker Symphony Laboratories, of

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

, in October 1995. Winbond was affected by power cuts caused by the

1999 Jiji earthquake The Chi-Chi earthquake (later also known as the Jiji earthquake, 921 Earthquake, or the great earthquake of September 21), was a 7.3 Richter magnitude scale, ML or 7.7 Moment magnitude scale, Mw earthquake which occurred in Jiji, Nanto ...

forcing the company to pause manufacturing. By 2002 Winbond had 4,000 employees. In 2004 Winbond was said to have a "continuous-learning culture", having 1,200 training programs for its employees. In August 2004,

Infineon Infineon Semiconductor solutions is the largest microcontroller manufacturer in the world, as well as Germany's largest semiconductor manufacturer. It is also the leading automotive semiconductor manufacturer globally. Infineon had roughly 58,0 ...

announced a deal with Winbond to build a factory to make DRAM. The computer IC, consumer electronics IC, and logic product foundry divisions of Winbond were spun off as Nuvoton Technology Corporation on 1 July 2008. In 2010 Winbond was manufacturing DDR2 DRAM using technology licensed from

Qimonda Qimonda Aktiengesellschaft, AG ( ) was a German DRAM, memory company split out of Infineon Technologies (itself a spun off business unit of Siemens AG) on 1 May 2006 to form at the time the second largest DRAM company worldwide, according to the ...

. In 2019 Karamba Security partnered with Winbond to make secure embedded flash products. In 2023 Winbond joined the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express Consortium.

References

1987 establishments in Taiwan Computer companies of Taiwan Companies based in Taichung Computer hardware companies Computer memory companies Companies established in 1987 Electronics companies of Taiwan Taiwanese brands Companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Semiconductor companies of Taiwan {{Taiwan-company-stub

History

See also

References