Taiwanese Powerchip and Japanese Renesas and Sharp announced on February 13 that they plan to forge a joint venture, to be named Renesas SP Drivers, whereby they will jointly develop, produce, and market drive ICs for small- and medium-sized LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) panels.

According to Taiwan's Economic Daily News, the new JV will be headquartered in Kodaira, Tokyo and is slated to be operational in April 2008. With a capital investment of five billion Yen (US$ 46.4 million; US$1=107.85 Yen), Renesas and Sharp will each hold a stake of 55% and 25%, with the remaining stake going to Powerchip, according to the same report.

The strategic alliance is aimed at lower cost and higher competitiveness by leveraging Sharp's and Renesas' respective technologies. Through the alliance, Powerchip will offer contract manufacturing service through its spun-off subsidiary Maxchip, which is expected to begin operations in April 1, 2008, with an expected monthly capacity of four million units. Maxchip's key product portfolio includes NAND flash chips, specialty DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) image sensors, and LCD driver ICs.