Taiwan Semiconductor Manufact-uring Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's largest custom-chip maker, said it expects the company's Shanghai plant to become profitable this year, three years after starting production.
"We'll be increasing the capacity of the Shanghai fab this year from 34,000 wafers per month, and expect it to turn profitable in the second half," TSMC spokeman Tzeng Jinn-haw (曾晉皓) said yesterday.
Tzeng declined to give details of production targets, or what products are made at the factory, or to identify customers.
On April 26, TSMC's chief executive Rick Tsai (蔡力行) said at an investors conference that the company's US$898 million Shanghai plant would break even in the second half of this year after around three-year operation.
"There is no bottleneck in the Shanghai factory's operation," Tsai said in response to an investor's question. "If there were any, there would be a slow transfer of [advanced] technologies," Tsai said at the time.
TSMC's Chinese plant will make up less than five percent of the company's total production this year, according to the chipmaker's forecast.
TSMC recently started making 8-inch wafers in China using relatively advanced 0.18-micron processing technology -- as opposed to the previously used 0.25-micron technology it used -- after receiving approval from the Taiwanese government at the end of last year.
The Shanghai plant is expected to make 34,000 8-inch wafers a month by the end of this year from the 30,000 wafers it now produces, Tsai said on April 26.
TSMC is the sole Taiwan chipmaker operating a Chinese plant. Computer memory chipmaker ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) will be the second one after it obtained approval earlier this year. ProMOS is scheduled to ramp up its Chinese factory by the end of next year.
The Shanghai plant had installed capacity to produce 90,000 8-inch wafers during the first quarter, TSMC said last month in a statement on its Web site. Capacity may rise to 94,000 wafers in the second quarter, 98,000 wafers in the third, and 101,000 in the fourth, it said.
The plant's annual capacity for 8-inch wafers may rise to 383,000 at the end of this year, from 262,000 last year, the company said.
Chip sales in China, the world's biggest semiconductor market, may almost triple to US$111 billion in 2011 from US$39 billion in 2005 as it manufactures more mobile phones, computers and digital music players, research company IC Insights Inc said.
China may produce 29 percent of the world's consumer electronics in 2010, rising from 20 percent in 2005, researcher Gartner Inc said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”