Mystery Qimonda man says logic, memory markets separate

Thomas Siefert, the COO, for it is he, said Qimonda is the number two DRAM manufacturer having been cast out of Infineon earlier this year. It still has 12,000 people working for it with huge partners. Around 93 per cent of the audience at Etre never seemed to have heard of Qimonda, despite the fact it is hasn't got a U in its name.

Siefert said it was second to Samsung in the DRAM market and has access to five 12-inch wafer fabs worldwide - more than Samsung. Thoise include fabs run by Chinese firm SMIC, but include Dresden and Richmond.

The DRAM market has changed, said Siefert. Now consumer and infrastructure apps are driving the market, with mobile PCs, flash MP3, digital TV, blade server and mobile handsets all taking big chunks of the market.

Siefert said Qimonda has riven its DRAM growth into it non PC applications and would like 50 per cent of its revenue to be non PC pretty soon. Its Trench architecture offers good power consumption, with a 10-15 per cent decrease.

Fast consoles need high performing graphics memory and Siefert said he believes Qimonda has grabbed a pole position.

He said that contrary to belief, DRAM is very exciting with a "high volatility" (really) and competition is fierce. There is no bad blood between Infineon and Qimonda, just "shades of grey" said Siefert. Logic development and memory development have gone their separate ways and there's no reason why logic companies have access to fabrication plants.

"You can run a successful logic business without having access to inhouse manufacturing capabilities," he said. But in the last 18 months three firms such as Freescale, Philips and Infineon had done just that. Intel has already spun out their flash business in a joint version with Micron. He said that volatility is not as great in the semiconductor business because of the increased number of applications for memory. Profitability depends on the application but there is still room to make good profits, said Siefert. µ