Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said the Internet of Things (IoT) would be the industry’s major growth driver in the next three to five years.
The uptake of the IoT, including wearable devices, would spur demand for key components such as microcontrollers, image sensors and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sensors, said John Wei (尉濟時), a senior director of TSMC’s mobile and computing business division.
“Those components will not entirely be made at 8-inch factories. Many of them, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth [sensors], are produced at 12-inch factories… The demand will be diverse from low-end [chips] to high-end [chips],” Wei told reporters on the sidelines of a press conference for the annual SEMICON exhibition in Taipei.
Wei said the IoT would not represent significant shipments in the near term, but it would be a big growth engine for the semiconductor industry in next three to five years, when the whole ecosystem and business model matured.
TSMC would be ready with the technologies needed, from power management ICs to application processors, he said.
Wei’s comments echoed TSMC chairman Morris Chang’s (張忠謀) speech on the “Next Big Thing” in March, when he said the IoT would be the industry’s new growth driver, taking over mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
SEMI Taiwan president Terry Tsao (曹世綸) yesterday said that the global semiconductor equipment market is expected to expand at a rate of 20.8 percent this year to US$38.4 billion and would grow about 11 percent year-on-year to US$42.6 billion next year, with Taiwan being the top consumer.
Tsao attributed the growth to new investment in IoT technologies.
Separately, equipment maker ASML Holding NV said its customers using advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography would mass produce wafers by the end of 2016.
“We have made some progress. And we believe the EUV system will allow our customers to save manufacturing costs effectively,” ASML Taiwan director of technical marketing Peter Cheng (鄭國偉) said on the sidelines of the SEMICON press conference.
“More than one customer have had their EUV lithography machines reach a throughput of 500 wafers per day,” Cheng said.
The daily throughput is expected to increase to 15,000 wafers a day by 2016, based on the company’s roadmap, Cheng said.
Early last month, ASML confirmed that IBM Corp marked an EUV throughput record by producing 637 wafers a day.
EUV is the leading candidate for printing fine patterns for next-generation chips.
TSMC was not certain whether it would start using the EUV system to manufacture chips on 10-nanometer (nm) or 7-nanometer process technologies. TSMC is scheduled to start mass production of 10nm chips in 2017.
SEMI Taiwan said the annual trade show has attracted 650 companies around the world to showcase their latest products at the three-day exhibition, up from last year’s 586 companies.
Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Association consultant Xue Zi (薛自) said 13 of its members, including semiconductor equipment supplier North Microelectronics (北方微電子), would attend the show.
The number has doubled from last year, when the association’s members joined the show for the first time, Xue said.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
It is not just people — in China, the robots are also getting ready to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Friday was dress rehearsal day for four cute humanoid robots, each about 95 centimeters tall, at a mall in western Beijing. Curious onlookers stopped to watch. Each robot got a colorful lion costume and within minutes the moves started: Bend the knees, up, to the left, to the right, shake the mask, and do it all again. Ahead of the Lunar New Year, and as part of different “fairs” and activities around Beijing, some venues have been busy setting up their stages and
RSS