Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that the majority of its most advanced chips would continue to be manufactured in Taiwan and that it is boosting advanced chip packaging capacity to catch up with fast-growing demand driven by generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ChatGPT.
Deeply rooted in Taiwan, TSMC is expanding production capacity for its most advanced 3-nanometer (nm) chips at its Tainan fab and is building new plants to produce new 2-nanometer chips in Hsinchu and Taichung in 2025.
The chipmaker also plans to produce next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4-nanometer chips, which are currently under development, at home, it said.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
“A majority of [these advanced chips] will be made in Taiwan,” TSMC chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said in response to a shareholder’s question about capacity expansion plans during the company’s annual general meeting in Hsinchu.
"I think Taiwan’s semiconductor industry plays a stabilising role amid global geopolitical tensions. Whether it’s China or the United States... they all hope that TSMC is around," said TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音).
"I hope Taiwan’s semiconductor industry can do well to have a stabilising effect on global geopolitical conflict."
Although TSMC has been expanding its global footprint in the past few years to meet customers’ requirements, it expects that only a small portion, or about 20 percent, of its 28-nanometer chips and some advanced chips would be made at fabs outside Taiwan in the next five years or even longer.
Aside from its advanced fabs in the US, TSMC deploys more mature process technologies to produce chips mostly for vehicles and other gadgets at its fabs in China and Japan.
The company is also evaluating plans to build two new fabs — in Japan and in Europe, likely in Germany — to produce less advanced chips.
TSMC is engaging with customers and partners to evaluate the feasibility of building a specialty fab focused on automotive technology in Germany, it said.
Like its Japanese fab, the company is considering allowing some automotive customers to hold minor stakes in the planned fab, Liu told a media briefing after the shareholders’ meeting.
At home, TSMC is trying hard to boost advanced packaging capacity through unconventional approaches to cope with demand after ChatGPT and other generative AI applications became popular at the start of the year.
“Because of ChatGPT, TSMC has received large orders for advanced packaging. Demand has greatly exceeded our capacity,” Liu said.
Nvidia Corp, a major supplier of AI graphics processing units, is one of the major clients of TSMC’s chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology.
To satisfy customers’ demand, TSMC allocated some capacity for the advanced packaging technology at its fab in Taoyuan’s Longtan District (龍潭), Liu said, adding that it outsources some of the CoWoS production to chip packagers.
For the full year, CoWoS capacity would be double the size of last year, as the company continues its pace of expansion, he said.
Revenue contribution from chips used in generative AI applications is still tiny, but this new business is helping the company’s advanced chip packaging reach economies of scale, Liu said.
TSMC also called on the government to step up efforts to encourage green energy production.
Because of the scarcity of energy from renewable sources in Taiwan, the company would not be able to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, Liu said.
Additional Reporting By AFP
COMBINING FORCES: The 66th Marine Brigade would support the 202nd Military Police Command in its defense of Taipei against ‘decapitation strikes,’ a source said The Marine Corps has deployed more than 100 soldiers and officers of the 66th Marine Brigade to Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) as part of an effort to bolster defenses around the capital, a source with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. Two weeks ago, a military source said that the Ministry of National Defense ordered the Marine Corps to increase soldier deployments in the Taipei area. The 66th Marine Brigade has been tasked with protecting key areas in Taipei, with the 202nd Military Police Command also continuing to defend the capital. That came after a 2017 decision by the ministry to station
ALL-IN-ONE: A company in Tainan and another in New Taipei City offer tours to China during which Taiwanese can apply for a Chinese ID card, the source said The National Immigration Agency and national security authorities have identified at least five companies that help Taiwanese apply for Chinese identification cards while traveling in China, a source said yesterday. The issue has garnered attention in the past few months after YouTuber “Pa Chiung” (八炯) said that there are companies in Taiwan that help Taiwanese apply for Chinese documents. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) last week said that three to five public relations firms in southern and northern Taiwan have allegedly assisted Taiwanese in applying for Chinese ID cards and were under investigation for potential contraventions of the Act Governing
‘INVESTMENT’: Rubio and Arevalo said they discussed the value of democracy, and Rubio thanked the president for Guatemala’s strong diplomatic relationship with Taiwan Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Guatemala City on Wednesday where they signed a deal for Guatemala to accept migrants deported from the US, while Rubio commended Guatemala for its support for Taiwan and said the US would do all it can to facilitate greater Taiwanese investment in Guatemala. Under the migrant agreement announced by Arevalo, the deportees would be returned to their home countries at US expense. It is the second deportation deal that Rubio has reached during a Central America trip that has been focused mainly on immigration. Arevalo said his
‘SOVEREIGN AI’: As of Nov. 19 last year, Taiwan was globally ranked No. 11 for having computing power of 103 petaflops. The governments wants to achieve 1,200 by 2029 The government would intensify efforts to bolster its “Sovereign Artificial Intelligence [AI]” program by setting a goal of elevating the nation’s collective computing power in the public and private sectors to 1,200 peta floating points per second (petaflops) by 2029, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The goal was set to fulfill President William Lai’s (賴清德) vision of turning Taiwan into an “AI island.” Sovereign AI refers to a nation’s capabilities to produce AI using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks. One petaflop allows 1 trillion calculations per second. As of Nov. 19 last year, Taiwan was globally ranked No. 11 for
RSS