Elpida (Tokyo) and Taiwan's ProMOS Technologies Corp. announced the signing of a DRAM foundry agreement.

For some time, Elpida has also outsourced DRAM production at Taiwan's Rexchip Electronics Corp. Last month, Elpida increased its stake in Rexchip from 52 percent to 64 percent. The remaining shares are owned by Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Corp.

Under its new deal, Elpida will provide advanced DRAM process and product technologies to ProMOS. ProMOS will provide certain amount of manufacturing capacity at ProMOS' Taichung 300-mm wafer fab to Elpida for the manufacturing of Elpida's advanced 1-Gbit DDR3 device.

Trial runs will be completed in the first half of 2010, with mass production following in the second half of the same year.

Thanks to a rebound in DRAMs, Elpida this week posted improved results and raised its capital spending forecast. Meanwhile, at one time, ProMOS had a technology deal with Hynix Semiconductor Inc. of South Korea. That deal ended in recent times.