Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it plans to start initial chip production using cutting-edge 5-nanometer technology in 2019, possibly allowing the company to pull ahead of peers.
TSMC this year entered the technology development phase for 5-nanometer technology, company co-chief executive officer Mark Liu (劉德音) told the chipmaker’s annual supply chain management forum.
The Hsinchu-based firm has about 6,000 research and development (R&D) personnel working on the development of 5-nanometer technology, Liu said.
Photo: CNA
“TSMC has set a high and aggressive target as its [5-nanometer] technology road map shows,” Clark Tseng (曾瑞榆), a senior semiconductor analyst with Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, said by telephone. “It is likely that TSMC will lead its competitors in ramping 5-nanometer technology, as no clear road map has been disclosed by Samsung Electronics yet.”
TSMC this year plans to increase R&D spending by 15 percent from last year, alongside a capital expenditure of US$10 billion, to boost its technology leadership, Liu said.
The chipmaker spent US$2.21 billion on R&D last year, the company’s financial statement showed.
TSMC has also tasked several hundred R&D personnel with the initial development of 3-nanometer technology and is evaluating a fab site for 3-nanometer chip production, he added.
“We are optimistic about 3-nanometer” development, Liu said.
As for 7-nanometer technology, Liu said the company is confident that it will stay ahead of its major competitors in ramping up chip production using the advanced technology.
TSMC is to start initial chip production using 7-nanometer technology at the end of this quarter, followed by mass production next year.
Regarding 10-nanometer technology, Liu said 3,000 engineers and 1,500 technicians are working to ship a small volume of chips this quarter.
The volume will increase rapidly from the second quarter, he said.
TSMC has reportedly been tapped as a major chip supplier using the 10-nanometer technology for Apple Inc’s new iPhone models.
The company declined to comment on the reports.
Solid technological capabilities have helped TSMC gain a 65 to 70 percent share of the world’s 16-nanometer chip market and 80 percent share of the 28-nanometer chip market, the firm said.
South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co yesterday launched its first Exynos processor built on the company’s 10 nanometer FinFet process technology, the company said in a statement.
The advanced processor is in mass production, it said.
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
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS