Taipei  - Taiwan has picked Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc to help upgrade the island's semiconductor industry, an industry source said Wednesday.

But John Hsuan, head of the Taiwan Memory Co (TMC), which was formed last month to integrate Taiwan's semiconductor industry, said TMC also seeking the cooperation of US chipmaker Micron Technology Inc.

As Micron has partnerships with 2 Taiwan chipmakers and is bound by certain obligations, Taiwan must wait till Micron has "cleared things up" with those firms before TMC can discuss cooperation with Micron, he said.

Aiming to boost the competitiveness of its dynamic random access memory (DRAM) industry, Taiwan launched TMC in early March. Both Elpida and Micron have expressed interest in cooperating with TMC.

DRAM chips are main components of personal computers and serve as storage devices for applications running on them.

The merger would make TMC one of the leading chipmakers in the world, as both Elpida and Micron are leaders in the DRAM industry. (dpa)