Taiwan is ramping up international cooperation deals with countries like Canada and France in recent months as it parlays its role as the world’s chip kingpin to boost its global standing.
Just over the past week, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) announced two tech deals. It signed a science, technology and innovation arrangement with Canada to jointly grow talent training, while it will set up an office in Prague to help foster Czech chip design engineers.
Taipei’s chip diplomacy drive is its latest effort to break through China’s stern opposition to any formal exchanges with other nations and global powers.
Photo: CNA
“The situation of Taiwan was very difficult in the past, but in recent years we’re getting better and better because a lot of countries discover the existence of Taiwan mostly because of semiconductors,” NSTC Minister Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Taiwan has become a powerhouse of advanced electronics engineering, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) rising to become Asia’s most valuable company.
TSMC and a coterie of local chipmaking suppliers have carved out an indispensable role in the global electronics supply chain, and other nations have begun to offer subsidies to get them to export some of that knowhow and production overseas.
Japan recently completed a TSMC factory in Kumamoto, while the US authorized US$11.6 billion in grants and loans for an ambitious TSMC project in Arizona. Germany has also joined the US and Japan in pursuing plans for a TSMC facility within its borders.
France and Germany last year signed science and technology cooperation agreements with Taiwan. France said it was cooperating in areas of research including quantum computing, artificial intelligence and green industries. Taiwan started the string of international pacts with the US, its key security and trade partner, in late 2020. Wu said similar arrangements with other countries are coming soon.
Both the Czech Republic and France are also looking to leverage TSMC’s growing presence in Europe to their advantage. Czech Representative to Taiwan David Steinke has been busy convincing TSMC suppliers to set up operations in his country, while his French peer Franck Paris has been pushing for more collaboration between Taiwan and CEA-Leti, a top chip research institute in Grenoble.
In related news, the production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is forecast to stage a rebound this year, rising by 13.6 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.17 trillion (US$128 billion) following a 16.7 percent fall to NT$3.67 trillion last year, the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所) said on Tuesday.
The semiconductor industry is expected to make a comeback as inventory adjustments on global markets is coming to an end, MIC said.
It is also because global demand from end users has returned to growth, while emerging technologies such as automotive electronics, high-performance computing devices and artificial intelligence of things applications would push up demand further, it added.
The MIC expressed optimism over the pure-play wafer foundry business this year on the back of solid demand for advanced processes, forecasting production value would rise 15 percent to NT$2.4 trillion.
The production value of memorychip segment is expected to grow 20 percent to NT$152.2 billion this year, while the IC design and IC packaging and testing segments are expected to see their output increase 10 percent and 13 percent to NT$994 billion and NT$619 billion, respectively, it said.
Last year, the pure-play wafer foundry, IC design, memory chip, and IC packaging and testing segments saw their output drop 13.1 percent, 21.2 percent, 35.5 percent and 17.9 percent, respectively, it added.
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
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