Business groups from Taiwan and the Czech Republic yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on semiconductor cooperation.
During a seminar in Taipei on semiconductor investments in the Czech Republic, Taiwanese semiconductor material supplier Topoc Scientific Co (崇越科技) teamed up with the Taiwan Eastbound Alliance-Landing America (TeaLa, 台灣新東向全球產學研聯盟協進會) to ink the agreement with the Czech National Semiconductor Cluster.
J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), chairman of TeaLa and Topoc, said that since Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) announced a plan in August last year to build a wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has set its sights on investing in the Czech Republic, as the Germany city is close to the Czech border.
Photo courtesy of Topoc Scientific Co
“With regional supply chain synergy and the Czech Republic’s industrial and economic strength, coupled with its geographical advantage, the prospects for the semiconductor industry in the Czech Republic are promising,” Kuo said in a statement.
TSMC has worked with Bosch GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG and NXP Semiconductors NV to set up a joint venture, called European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which aims to build a wafer fab in Dresden.
The Dresden project has secured strong support from the German government and its partners in the investment, with construction set to start in the second half of this year as planned.
The German plant is scheduled to start commercial production at the end of 2027, using 12-nanometer, 16-nanometer, 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies to produce chips for automotive electronics and specialty industrial devices.
At the MOU signing ceremony, Kuo said that to support TSMC’s investment plan in Germany, its Taiwanese suppliers are expected to follow the chipmaker and go global.
Taiwanese suppliers to TSMC are likely to establish a foothold in the Czech Republic around next year, providing services to the chipmaker and other major clients by taking advantage of the geographic proximity, he added.
Topoc is studying the feasibility of making inroads into Europe to provide integrated services such as solutions to upstream foundry operators and backend IC packaging and testing services firms, as well as logistics and warehousing services.
The Czech Republic should build science-based parks to push for advanced semiconductor technology development as Taiwan has done, Kuo said.
In Taiwan, Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) and Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) are home to high-end fabs owned by TSMC and other major semiconductor giants.
Speaking at the seminar, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Chern-chyi (陳正祺) said Taiwan and the Czech Republic have shared values and mutual trust, and have forged close business ties, in particular after direct flights were launched last year.
The Czech Republic has a good foundation in industrial development with a large pool of quality workers, so more than 25 percent of foreign investment has poured into the manufacturing sector, Chen said.
Taiwanese companies, such as iPhone assemblers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Pegatron Corp (和碩), contract notebook computer maker Wistron Corp (緯創) and PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) have already invested in the country, Chen added.
In November last year, the Supply Chain Resilience Center, jointly established by Taiwan and the Czech Republic, opened in the European country to boost efforts to build a semiconductor supply chain.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS