United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) yesterday held a ceremony to celebrate the arrival of the first equipment tools for phase 3 expansion at its Fab12i in Singapore.
UMC, the second largest pure play wafer foundry operator in Taiwan, called the equipment move-in a new milestone for its production in Singapore with guests including representatives from Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), Jurong Town Council (JTC), the Institute of Microelectronics (IME) as well as its construction partners, major equipment and material vendors.
In February 2022, UMC announced plans to invest US$5 billion in the phase 3 expansion of its Fab12i, or Fab12i P3, in Singapore and also designated the new facility one of the most advanced semiconductor fabs in the country, set to roll out chips made on its 22 nanometer and 28nm processes.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
UMC said yesterday that construction of the new 12-inch wafer facility is scheduled to be completed in the middle of this year.
The company added that mass production in the phase 3 facility at the Fab12i had previously been set for mid-next year but has now been pushed back to early 2026 due to adjustments in orders by clients.
The expansion of the Fab12i aims to meet demand for 5G, automotive and Internet of things applications, UMC said.
UMC has run pure play semiconductor foundries in Singapore for more than 20 years, using the Fab12i as a research and development center for advanced specialty technology development.
In the first quarter, UMC posted NT$10.46 billion (US$324 million) in net profit, down about 20 percent from the previous quarter, due to slow season effects, with earnings per share of NT$0.84, compared with NT$1.06 a quarter earlier.
However, the company predicts growth momentum will pick up in the second quarter with inventories in PCs, consumer electronic devices and communication gadgets returning to healthy levels.
The chipmaker forecasts that second quarter shipments will rise 1-3 percent from the first quarter.
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has