Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Saturday said that it would hold a ceremony on Thursday to mark the beginning of mass production using its 3-nanometer process.
The company is to mark the placing of the final beam at its Fab 18 in the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) in Tainan.
It would also detail its plans for expanding 3-nanometer production at the facility in the coming years, TSMC said.
Photo: Lam Yik Fei, Bloomberg
The fab currently mass produces chips using the 5-nanometer process.
It is unusual for TSMC to hold a ceremony to mark the beginning of commercial production of a new technology.
Analysts have said that the ceremony aims to announce TSMC’s intention to continue using Taiwan as a hub for research and development (R&D) and production, despite its overseas investments.
Speculation has risen that the company could relocate its production and R&D centers to the US.
The rumors arose after TSMC on Dec. 6 said at a tool-in ceremony for its 12-inch wafer plant in Phoenix, Arizona, that it would increase its planned US$12 billion investment there to US$40 billion to build a 3-nanometer fab by 2026, in addition to its planned 4-nanometer plant due to be completed in 2024.
The concerns intensified after TSMC sent a large group of Taiwanese engineers to support the Arizona plant, raising investors’ fears that the move could undermine the firm’s base in Taiwan.
The planned Arizona plants are expected to produce more than 600,000 wafers a year, TSMC has said.
Last week, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told a forum held by the Mount Jade Global Science and Technology Association in Taipei that there was “no chance” that a single wafer fab would give a location a technical advantage over other semiconductor manufacturing sites.
TSMC plans to start mass producing chips using the N3E process next year. The process is based on the 3-nanometer technology and produces more efficient chips with a better yield rate.
The company is also developing a more sophisticated 2-nanometer process and plans to build a 2-nanometer fab in Hsinchu, with mass production scheduled to begin in 2025.
The 3-nanometer process uses 16-nanometer fin field-effect transistor technology, which is a 3D transistor structure that allows a chip to run faster using the same amount of energy or to run at the same speed on reduced power.
Chips made using the technology are 10 to 15 percent faster and 25 to 30 percent more energy-efficient than those produced with the 5-nanometer process, whose mass production started last year.
Apple Inc and Intel Corp are expected to place orders for chips made with TSMC’s 3-nanometer process, analysts have said.
The 2-nanometer process would be the first technology in which TSMC employs a gate-all-around structure, which reduces undesirable variability and mobility loss, making the technology the most competitive and efficient on the market, the company has said.
Early this month, Wayne Wang (王永壯), director general of the Hsinchu Science Park Bureau, said TSMC has plans to build a 1-nanometer process fab in the Longtan (龍潭) section of the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區).
TSMC has yet to confirm Wang’s announcement.
INCOMING FIX: While a date for updates has not been given, Apple said that the latest overheating incidents might be the result of apps and account data transfers Apple Inc on Saturday said that recent claims of new iPhones getting too hot to the touch are due to software and app-related bugs, and that fixes are coming soon. The company said the device can get warm in the first few days as it works overtime to get set up and restore a user’s data, due to a bug in the latest iOS 17 software, and because of some third-party apps overloading the system. Apple told Bloomberg it is working with developers behind the apps causing the iPhone to overheat and that fixes are in the process of being released.
MODERATING: A Caixin Insight analyst said China’s macroeconomy is recovering, albeit at a slow pace, but private businesses and exporters are still under pressure A private gauge of China’s manufacturing activity slowed its pace of expansion last month, suggesting there is still room for caution as the nation charts its economic trajectory for the rest of the year. The Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) was 50.6 last month, Caixin and S&P Global said in a statement yesterday — dipping closer to the 50 line, below which indicates contraction from the month before. Caixin’s services index was 50.2 for the month, still in expansion but also suggesting that the pace of growth in activity is losing momentum. The figures show a slightly precarious recovery even
Micron Technology Inc on Wednesday predicted a steeper loss than anticipated in the current quarter, indicating that an industry slump is still weighing on the largest US maker of memory chips. The company projected a fiscal first-quarter loss of as much as US$1.14 a share, excluding some items. Analysts had estimated a US$0.96 loss. On the bright side, revenue is expected to start recovering in the period. Micron predicted sales of US$4.2 billion to US$4.6 billion, compared with an estimate of US$4.21 billion. For Micron and competitors Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc, this year has been brutal. Customers in their
Aiming high: Despite pandemic-related losses, Eslite’s newest location should help the department store regain footing with a potential NT$4 billion in sales Eslite Spectrum Corp (誠品生活) yesterday held a grand opening for a new department store in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) that is the largest in Asia by floor space and would help the leisure lifestyle services provider swing into profit next year. The new outlet, Eslite Spectrum Sindian, has almost 20,000 ping (66,000m2) of floor space that might generate annual revenue of NT$4 billion to NT$5 billion (US$123.96 million to US$154.95 million) by housing 250 retail brands including 20 themed restaurants to meet the entertainment needs of people in neighboring areas, Eslite Spectrum chairwoman Mercy Wu (吳旻潔) said. The number of
RSS