Touring the Memory Giants - Kingmax and Kingpak (Page 1)

Introduction

Each year the always hectic and ever exciting city of Taipei plays host to Computex - The biggest computer trade show in Asia and what is considered by many as one of the most interesting and spicy shows in the world...for more reasons than one.

For the second year running we were sponsored to attend the event and as you would have seen, we posted our daily coverage from the busy show floor, which I trust you would have enjoyed. Thankfully though, we didn't just post coverage - The trip was broken up into company meetings, company parties, and a lot of drinking at pubs like The Tavern and Carnegies and we can't forget factory tours - in particular tours of Kingmax and Kingpak.

In the past we have done tours with companies like TSMC (a company which produces chips for fabless companies like VIA and so on) and Abit, but I particularly enjoyed the tours of Kingmax and Kingpak because both were more laid back which made it more relaxing and enjoyable. It was a very personalized tour - being the only person from the media on it may have had something to do with that.

Very early on the first day of our trip Ken Barsley from Kingmax Australia, Mos Chou from Kingmax Taiwan and myself made the hour long drive from down town Taipei to Shin Chu. This highly industrialized area is where both the Kingmax and Kingpak fabs are based, as well as many other company factories which have not yet moved to the new Taipei "Silicon Valley" area, like may have done already or have plans on doing so.

Watch on as we show you, mostly in picture form, what goes on within the barracks of both the Kingmax and Kingpak fabs, the memory giants of the industry.