Walton Advanced Engineering will continue to operate during most of the Lunar New Year holidays, due to an influx of orders for DDR3 chips, according to the company.
Walton has seen utilization rates reach 90%. With capacity almost fully booked, it has decided to schedule only two days for annual maintenance during the Lunar New Year holidays, the company said.
Walton noted that DDR3 memory contributed 30% to its overall DRAM shipments around the end of 2009. The backend service supplier originally aimed to raise the proportion to 50% at the end of second-quarter 2010, but it may reach the goal earlier than expected in May, the company said.
Walton said it has stepped up purchases of high-speed testers, while seeing growing demand for DDR3 chips from customers. New equipment from Advantest and Verigy will be installed between April and May.
Walton said it has seen order visibility stretch to mid-April. Revenues for the first quarter may drop slightly on quarter, but rise 20-30% on year, the company estimated.
In response to a recent report indicating Walton would be Winbond Electronics' sole backend supplier for graphics DDR (GDDR) chips, Walton said the chipmaker has not begun volume production of GDDR and therefore has not yet chosen its partner for the chip's backend supply.