Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密) commenced construction yesterday of a new NT$100 billion (US$3.1 billion) chip-packaging plant in Yunlin County’s Douliou City (斗六) to scale up capacity amid artificial intelligence (AI)-driven supply bottlenecks.
The Taichung-based company plans to offer advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging services at the new plant after it begins first-phase operations in 2028, SPIL vice chairman Chang Yen-chun (張衍鈞) said in a statement.
It would be a new growth engine for SPIL and allow the company to play an indispensable role in the global AI supply chains, Chang said.
Photo courtesy of Siliconware Precision Industries Co
SPIL is a major subsidiary of ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, and both have benefited from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) limited CoWoS capacity amid the AI boom.
The Douliou plant, SPIL’s second advanced packaging facility in Yunlin County, is expected to create 1,300 jobs upon the launch of its first-phase production, with the figure rising to 2,200 jobs after the plant is fully online, the company said.
In September last year, SPIL began operations at its first Yunlin plant in Huwei Township (虎尾).
The new investment would enhance SPIL’s advanced packaging capability and improve the company’s production efficiency and yield, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said in the statement.
It would elevate and safeguard Taiwan’s position in the global semiconductor supply chains, Kung said.
Over the past two years, SPIL has invested about NT$200 billion in new facilities in Taichung, Changhua County, Yunlin County, Hsinchu City and Tainan, creating 8,000 jobs, the company said.
The company plans to raise NT$16.19 billion by offering 810 million new shares to support its raw material purchases and capacity expansions, with ASE set to subscribe to all of the new shares, SPIL said in filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Monday.
South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc is considering options for its Chongqing, China-based facility, including bringing in an investor to help accelerate growth, people with knowledge of the matter said. The company, a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips to Nvidia Corp, is speaking with prospective advisers to help review the business, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. A potential stake sale could value the facility at about US$3 billion, the people said. The Chongqing facility provides a large scale semiconductor packaging and testing base, helping boost the company’s NAND flash back-end production to grow globally. Suitors may include
CATCHING UP: The market consensus of 20 percent growth in global DRAM capacity by 2028 would not meet AI demand, given AI’s rapid development, Winbond said Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電) yesterday said it plans to start expanding its Kaohsiung fab next year to boost DRAM capacity as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom drives a memorychip supercycle. Construction is scheduled to start in January, with pilot production set for the end of 2029, the company said. The Module B fab would have an initial installed capacity of 10,000 12-inch wafers per month, with total capacity of 50,000 wafers per month, Winbond said. The company plans to use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to further scale up DRAM production in the later phases of the expansion, it said. The
SECURING SUPPLY: Customers are seeking longer-term contracts, while the company discusses potential price hikes amid rising energy, logistics and labor costs, it said GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓) on Tuesday said it expects revenue to grow at a “meaningful” rate next year, rather than in the second half of this year as previously anticipated, after a blaze at its fab in Novara, Italy, slowed its sales momentum. While the incident should have minimal impact on the company’s 8-inch wafer manufacturing equipment, production would take time to recover, the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier said. “Our revenue [this year] should be flat or slightly higher than last year ... because of the fire. Otherwise, we are supposed to have much higher revenue,” GlobalWafers chairperson Doris Hsu
Taiwanese solar manufacturers yesterday said that new US import tariffs on silicon and related products would have a limited impact. The comments came after the White House on Thursday imposed a series of price floors and a 15 percent tariff on products made from polysilicon, the raw material used in semiconductors and solar panels that is primarily produced by China. US President Donald Trump’s decision under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 is aimed at supporting domestic chip and solar supply chains needed to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy. Polysilicon, an ultra-pure form of silicon, sits at