■ Taiwan leads in nanospending
Taiwan led the world in per capita government research and development spending in nanotechnology last year at US$9.40, nearly twice the amount of per capita spending by the US, which invested US$5.42, according to a report released by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) yesterday. Nanotechnology has been applied in various information technology products, including semiconductors and liquid crystal display parts. As of February this year, Taiwan had been issued 12 patents of application of nanotechnology, mostly for carbon nanotube display applications, the report said, citing a study from Lux Research. According to estimates from the Nanotechnology Research Center of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), the annual output of Taiwan's nanotech industry is expected to top NT$1 trillion (US$31.4 billion) by the year 2010, representing 3 percent of the global market, the report said.
■ Local bank invites bids
Taiwan Business Bank (台灣企銀), a lender 44 percent owned by the government, said it has started inviting bids from local and foreign investors as part of the government's plan to speed up financial consolidation. "We have hired a financial adviser to handle this," Lee Chun-sheng (李俊昇), executive vice president of the bank, said yesterday.
■ NT dollar closes lower
The New Taiwan dollar remained weak against its US counterpart, dropping NT$0.100 to close at NT$31.966 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$805 million.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
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