Graphics card makers in Taiwan have welcomed Infineon Technologies' plan to challenge the domination of Samsung Electronics and Hynix in the graphics DRAM market, expecting the competition to reduce their memory procurement costs.

Infineon yesterday announced that its DRAM for graphics applications is ready for volume production, estimating that the segment will account for 7-8 per cent of the company's total DRAM output by the end of 2005.

Products range from low-to-medium-end DDR and DDR2 chips, to high-end graphics DDR3 (GDDR3) chips, Infineon said, adding that all the graphics DRAM will be produced at the company's 12-inch fab in Germany without any outsourcing.

Infineon is also accelerating migration to DDR2, as it expects demand for DDR2 graphics memory to pick up in the fourth quarter of 2005, and DDR2 will have completely replaced DDR in the graphics memory segment by the end of 2006, the company said.

Samsung and Hynix have been dominating the graphics DRAM market, leaving Taiwan's graphics card makers, who have 90 per cent of the worldwide market, with little choice for supply.

DRAM makers in Taiwan expect the graphics memory market to see higher growth than the standard DRAM market over the next few years.

SOURCE