UMC retreats from China DRAM venture, Report says

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United Microelectronics Corp. (Hsinchu, Taiwan), the foundry whose DRAM development support of China's Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. was a focus of the US-China trade dispute in 2018, is retreating from the collaboration, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

eenewseurope.com, Jan. 11, 2019 – 

UMC is moving about 140 engineers off the project out of a total of 300, as a first step towards ending its involvement in memory chip development, the report said referencing unnamed sources.

The move is an apparent response to Jinhua being hit by a ban by the US Department of Commerce in October 2018. That was the latest step in an escalation that saw UMC indicted in a California court in December 2017 over the alleged theft of DRAM trade secrets from Micron Technology Inc. (Boise, Idaho) and UMC suing Micron alleging patent infringement in the Chinese courts in 2018.

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