Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that the construction of a planned 12-inch wafer plant in Kaohsiung would start later this year.
The chipmaker’s comments came after the Kaohsiung City Government invited the company to attend a groundbreaking ceremony on Sunday at the Nanzih Technology Industrial Park (楠梓科技產業園區), where the new plant is to be built.
The park would sit on the former site of a naphtha cracking plant owned by state-owned oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油).
Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung City Government Economic Development Bureau
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) yesterday did not confirm whether work on the Nanzih industrial park would begin on Sunday, but said it would start this month.
The city government said in a statement that TSMC’s presence in the industrial park is expected to help the city establish a semiconductor cluster within five years, which would boost high-end semiconductor technology development and cultivate a talent pool for the industry.
The semiconductor supply chain in Kaohsiung is expected to create more than 45,000 jobs, and speed up the pace of development not only in the manufacturing sector, but also in the service and commercial sectors, it said.
The world’s largest contract chipmaker unveiled its plans for the Kaohsiung plant in November last year.
The plant is to use the advanced 7-nanometer process and the mature 28-nanometer process to produce chips, with production scheduled to begin in 2024.
Chips made using the 7-nanometer process are expected to be used in emerging technologies such as high-performance computing devices, while chips made with the 28-nanometer process would likely be destined for automotive electronic applications, analysts said.
While TSMC has not disclosed any financial terms for the new facility, analysts said it could cost NT$200 billion to NT$300 billion (US$6.67 billion to US$10 billion).
The proposed plant passed an environmental impact assessment in April. It is expected to create 1,500 jobs, with an annual production value of NT$157.6 billion.
The city government said that since Chen assumed the post of Kaohsiung mayor in August 2020 after winning a by-election, the city had as of the end of April attracted NT$498.1 billion in investments.
Other major technology companies, such as Win Semiconductors Corp (穩懋半導體) and Germany-based Merck Group, have pledged to invest in Kaohsiung.
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
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
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now