Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, yesterday said it expects to complete customers’ qualifications for its advanced 7-nanometer (nm) technology in the first quarter next year, outpacing its major competitors.
That might pave the way for the chipmaker to ramp up the production of 7nm chips in the first quarter of 2018, making TSMC the world’s first foundry offering 7nm technology.
“TSMC will be the first to offer its customers the world’s most advanced technology,” TSMC co-chief executive officer Mark Liu (劉德音) said in a speech during the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu.
Photo: CNA
TSMC competes with Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co in offering advanced technologies to chip designers and electronic companies. Samsung is reportedly to receive customer’s qualification for its 7nm technology in the second half of next year, lagging behind its Taiwanese peer by about three quarters.
Liu said TSMC achieves a stable yield rate on its 7nm technology. The yield rate for 7nm SRAM chips reaches between 30 and 40 percent, he said.
There are 20 customers currently in intensive design engagement with the company for 7nm technology, TSMC said.
The 7nm chip can be used in a wide range of products from mobile graphic processing units, game consoles, network processors to consumer product applications.
To facilitate the development of its advanced technologies, TSMC yesterday said it plans to spend US$2.2 billion on research and development (R&D) this year to capture next year’s growth opportunities.
The R&D spending represents about a 10 percent increase from US$2 billion last year.
Together with TSMC’s top 10 fabless customers, the total R&D investment will reach as high as US$20 billion this year, Liu said.
TSMC also plans to expand the pool of its R&D engineers to about 5,690 this year, from last year’s 5,123.
“We will continue to increase our R&D investment as we see challenges over next five years,” Liu said. “Those investment will be the driver for our future growth.”
As smartphone growth is decelerating, TSMC expects new growth will come from segments including automotive, artificial intelligence, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), as well as image recognition and the Internet of Things (IoT).
To cope with rising demand from those new devices, TSMC has created four platforms — a mobile platform, high-performance computing platform, automotive platform and an IoT platform — to help customers shrink time-to-market for their products.
Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to grow by just 7 percent annually this year to 1.478 million units, with half from China, TSMC predicted.
The global semiconductor industry is expected to grow just 1 percent this year to US$358 billion from last year, it forecast.
Last year, TSMC made 8,900 products for 470 customers including Apple Inc, Qualcomm Inc, MediaTek Inc (聯發科) and China’s HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體).
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