Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park will expand by 29.2 hectares, thanks to land acquired from the Ministry of National Defense, officials said yesterday.
The new space at the crowded, 605-hectare industrial park will make room for two additional 12-inch chip fabs and an IC design center.
DRAM makers Macronix International Co (
PHOTO: AFP
The land, formerly the Du-hsing military base (
At a ceremony yesterday, President Chen Shui-bian (
New facilities on the land are expected to be completed by 2005.
The president said a partnership between the public and private sector made the project possible. Chen also praised the defense ministry, which agreed to relocate the army base to make room for the high-tech firms.
Because of rapid growth and high concentration of tech companies, the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park is known as Taiwan's Silicon Valley.
The park is home to 312 technology firms, including the nation's two biggest chipmakers, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (
But a shortage of space at the park has forced companies to look to places such as Singapore to set up new chip fabs.
After an environmental impact assessment was completed and the 29.2 hectares rezoned for industrial use, the project was able to move ahead yesterday.
Officials say a sewage treatment plant will also be built on the property to treat waste water generated from the firms.
Yesterday's ground-breaking ceremony was hosted by Wei Che-ho (
"We hope to complete construction by the end of 2005," Wei said.
Hsinchu County Commissioner Cheng Yung-chin (
Earlier this month, officials from the National Science Council said that a fault line running through the property shouldn't be a problem. Under the property's environmental impact assessment, buildings will be required to be 50m from each other.
Tougher building codes have also been adopted.
According to geologists from National Taiwan University, who inspected the fault line, the area has been inactive for roughly more 30,000 years, although that doesn't preclude the possibility of future seismic activity.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS