Microchip Technology Inc yesterday said it has deepened its partnership with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), eyeing the foundry giant’s 40-nanometer manufacturing capacity at its Japanese fabs.
Microchip, a supplier of microcontroller units based in Chandler, Arizona, said the wafer capacity at Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc (JASM) would improve its supply chain resilience and boost its ability to serve global customers regarding their automotive, industrial and networking applications.
JASM is TSMC’s 85 percent-owned manufacturing subsidiary in Kumamoto Prefecture.
Photo: Bloomberg
“Microchip’s reputation for providing responsible and reliable supply management is enhanced with this new TSMC manufacturing path,” Microchip senior vice president of worldwide manufacturing and technology Michael Finley said in a statement.
“Customers can have confidence when designing our products into their applications and platforms, with the support of resilient and robust manufacturing capabilities,” Finley said.
The partnership with TSMC would also ensure that customers have sufficient supply in the face of external factors such as frequently changing business conditions and natural disasters, Microchip said.
“This initiative with Microchip is further proof of TSMC’s commitment to supporting our customers’ long-term growth and innovation,” TSMC North America senior vice president of business management Rose Castanares said in the statement.
JASM’s first Kumamoto fab is scheduled to enter mass production in the fourth quarter, focusing on 40, 28, 16 and 12-nanometer chips.
The firm plans to begin construction of a second fab there by the end of this year to make advanced 6 and 7-nanometer chips.
The two Kumamoto fabs combined are expected to produce more than 100,000 12-inch equivalent wafers per month for automotive, industrial, consumer and high-performance computing applications.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS