The construction of a wafer fab in Japan to be run by a joint venture led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is to begin today.
Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc (JASM), the joint venture, said that it signed an agreement with authorities in Kikuyo-machi in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture on Tuesday, with company president Yuichi Horita announcing the schedule for the new plant’s construction.
The plant is expected to begin shipping products in December 2024, Horita said.
Photo: Cheng I-Hwa, Bloomberg
In November last year, TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it would spend up to US$2.12 billion in equity investment on the wafer fab to establish a TSMC-majority-owned subsidiary to provide foundry services, with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp (SSS) taking a less than 20 percent stake in the new company.
In February, Japan’s Denso Corp said it would take an at least a 10 percent stake in the joint venture.
The plant would cover 72,000m2 and feature office buildings in addition to production lines, JASM said.
The company would move its headquarters from Kumamoto City to Kikuyo-machi once construction is completed, it said.
The plant would employ 1,700 people, including about 230 TSMC employees to be sent from Taiwan and about 200 from Sony Group Corp, which owns SSS, JASM said, adding that it would recruit about 1,200 workers.
TSMC dispatched the first group of 10 technology professionals from Taiwan last month, JASM said.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
POTENTIAL demand: Tesla’s chance of reclaiming its leadership in EVs seems uncertain, but breakthrough in full self-driving could help boost sales, an analyst said Chinese auto giant BYD Co (比亞迪) is poised to surpass Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV) company in annual sales. The two groups are expected to soon publish their final figures for this year, and based on sales data so far this year, there is almost no chance the US company led by CEO Elon Musk would retain its leadership position. As of the end of last month, BYD, which also produces hybrid vehicles, had sold 2.07 million EVs. Tesla, for its part, had sold 1.22 million by the end of September. Tesla’s September figures included a one-time boost in
RSS