The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC,
TSMC Deputy Chief Executive Officer Tseng Fan-cheng (
The government last Friday announced a relaxation of its restrictions on local semiconductor manufacturers' eight-inch wafer fab investments in mainland China. Any manufacturer with a 12-inch wafer-production facility that has operated for six consecutive months in Taiwan may apply for a permit.
Tseng said that the TSMC's 12-inch wafer fab in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park has received increasing orders since it started production in the fourth quarter of last year. The company expects to attain an economical production scale in the next two to three months -- and the production capacity is estimated to reach 13,000 units by the end of this year, he added.
While the TSMC is planning to relocate its eight-inch wafer-production facilities -- those that use the 0.25-micron process -- to the mainland, the company will maintain its 0.18-micron process production facilities in Taiwan, Tseng said.
Tseng disclosed that the company is also planning to set up new fabs of more advanced technologies in mainland China two years from now, because it is unlikely that investors will purchase new production equipment for the 0.25-micron process at that time.
The TSMC currently has nine eight-inch wafer fabs and two six-inch wafer fabs in Taiwan. While the six-inch wafer process technology is gradually phasing out, the company has donated the production facilities of a six-inch wafer fab to the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) for the establishment of a nanotechnology research-and-development center.
At the donation ceremony yesterday morning, Tseng said that TSMC was founded in 1987 under the initiative of then Economics Minister Lee Kwoh-ting (
Upon the expiration of the 15-year lease, the TSMC decided to donate the production facilities of the six-inch wafer fab to the ITRI as part of the process of returning the land, according to Tseng.
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