Korea seeks to produce more non-memory chips

DESPITE PUMPING OUT MEMORY like there's no tomorrow, Korea is concerned that its non-memory chip production is lacking, as new figures show silicon imports to the country outweigh the value of its exports. The Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy yesterday said that during May, monthly semiconductor exports totalled $1.34 billion, whereas imports amounted to $1.38 billion -- a $44 million semiconductor deficit.

The Ministry blamed the downward trend in the chip sector on its reliance on the memory chip business, which is constantly the subject of price fluctuations.

A Ministry official told the Korea Times that most non-memory semiconductor chips imported to Korea are used to produce home appliances such as computers, mobile handsets and digital TVs that are later shipped out to third countries. "Thus," he said, "most of the export prices of Korea's high-added-value electronic exports end up running out to foreign companies like Intel."

The South Korean government has drawn up a plan to develop the country's non-memory chip industry in an attempt to boost production of higher-values silicon components. Its points out that while 128 megabit synchronous DRAM PC 100 and PC 133 chips have been trading at around $2.5 in the US, a single chip -- Intel's Pentium 4 2.53 GHZ CPU -- is currently selling at $637 per unit.

" Our non-memory technology has a considerable gap between those of the US and Japan and, as non-memory chip design requires high research abilities, it is difficult to develop non-memory chips in a short time," a Samsung Electronics official told the Korean Times. µ