Entegris Inc, a supplier of advanced materials and process solutions for the semiconductor and other high-technology industries, yesterday held an opening ceremony in Kaohsiung for its largest manufacturing facility that would produce advanced products such as liquid filters that can be used in 2-nanometer process technology.
The US-based company expects to recruit more than 400 employees for the new facility by 2025, when the US$500 million plant becomes fully operational. The company employs 720 people in Taiwan.
The Kaohsiung factory is forecast to generate US$500 million per year when it is fully utilized, the company said.
Photo: Su Fu-nan, Taipei Times
There is potential for the company to further expand and invest in land adjacent to the fab, it said.
Entegris said it would not scale back investment on research-and-development efforts, nor on capital spending during downturns.
It also operates a research-and-development center in Hsinchu.
“Our new Kaohsiung facility demonstrates our commitment to serving our customers in Asia and supporting the local industry ecosystem,” Entegris chief executive officer Bertrand Loy said. “The expansion of our footprint here helps us provide greater supply security and shorter lead times to customers across the region.”
The Kaohsiung facility is expected to add 20 percent capacity for three major products, including advanced liquid filters, the company said.
Regarding whether Entegris factored in the geopolitical risks in building an advanced factory in Taiwan, Loy said: “There is a lot of nervousness around that... The grand opening of our Kaohsiung facility, it is really a statement of the company’s commitment” to Taiwan.
“We want to be adequately positioned to support our customers in Taiwan and their ecosystem,” Loy said.
Entegris counts Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as one of its largest customers in Taiwan.
The new Kaohsiung fab is to produce Entegris’ next-generation products for TSMC and its customers in Taiwan, the company said.
The liquid filters made at the fab can be used in 28-nanometer nodes and can be further miniaturized for 5-nanometer, 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer technology nodes, which extreme ultraviolet lithography tools would use, Entegris said.
The company expects the global semiconductor industry would touch bottom this quarter, Loy said.
However, the pace of recovery remains to be seen, he added.
Entegris has been working with local customers and partners in the ecosystem for the past 32 years, during which Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has expanded at an annual compound growth rate of 16 percent, the company said.
Taiwan, in particular, has a dominant position in the world, with a 65 percent market share, it added.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS