Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to invest NT$90 billion (US$2.9 billion) to expand its advanced chip packaging capacity in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) to cope with customer demand, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said yesterday.
The Hsinchu Science Park Bureau has approved its application to lease land at the Tongluo Science Park, a branch campus of the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), for the plant’s construction, the chipmaker said in a statement.
TSMC did not elaborate on the project, including the time frame for its operation, saying only that the investment would create 1,500 job opportunities.
Photo: Reuters
The new investment comes as the chipmaker is having difficulty supplying advanced packaging capacity, especially 3D packaging technology and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) technology, thanks to robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
With its leading-edge process technologies, TSMC makes the AI GPU H100 for Nvidia Corp and MI300 GPU for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
“We cannot fulfill 100 percent of customers’ needs,” TSMC chief executive officer C.C.Wei (魏哲家) told investors on Thursday last week. “We are increasing capacity as quickly as possible.”
The chipmaker plans to double its CoWoS capacity, Wei added, expecting the supply crunch to ease up at the end of next year.
TSMC has said it plans to allocate a small fraction of its capital expenditure budget of US$32 billion to US$36 billion this year to packaging.
A big chunk of the budget would go into the development of leading-edge technologies, including 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer processes, it said.
In addition to pure wafer foundry operations, TSMC operates five advanced chip packaging plants in Taiwan: at Hsinchu Science Park, Taoyuan’s Longtan District (龍潭), Miaoli County’s Jhunan Township (竹南), Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) in Taichung and the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) in Tainan.
Separately, TSMC said it is taking routine precautionary measures at all its fabs across the nation as Typhoon Doksuri approached Taiwan.
These include “24-hour on-duty personnel and emergency response teams, including water, electricity, mechanical and disaster recovery experts,” the chipmaker said in an e-mailed response to inquiries.
Other measures include inspections of drainage systems and waterproof gates; carrying out pump inventory testing; and minimizing use of temporary installations exposed to strong winds, TSMC said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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