Taiwan Semiconductor
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company, the world's largest dedicated independent ( pure-play)
semiconductor foundry In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab; sometimes foundry) is a factory where devices such as integrated circuits are manufactured. Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates ...
, and one of Taiwan's largest companies, with its headquarters and main operations located in the
Hsinchu Science Park The Hsinchu Science Park (HSP; ) is an industrial park established by the government of Taiwan on 15 December 1980. It straddles Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County in Taiwan. History The idea of the establishment of the Hsinchu Science Park was ...
in
Hsinchu Hsinchu (, Chinese: 新竹, Pinyin: ''Xīnzhú'', Wade–Giles: ''Hsin¹-chu²'') is a city located in northwestern Taiwan. It is the most populous city in Taiwan Province not among the special municipalities, with estimated 450,655 inhabi ...
. It is majority owned by foreign investors. Founded in Taiwan in 1987 by
Morris Chang Morris Chang (; born 10 July 1931), is a Taiwanese-American businessman who built his career in the United States and subsequently in Taiwan. He is the founder, as well as former chairman and CEO, of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (T ...
, TSMC was the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry and has long been the leading company in its field. When Chang retired in 2018, after 31 years of TSMC leadership, Mark Liu became chairman and C. C. Wei became Chief Executive. It has been listed on the
Taiwan Stock Exchange The Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (TWSE; ) is a financial institution, located in Taipei 101, in Taipei, Taiwan. The TWSE was established in 1961 and began operating as a stock exchange on 9 February 1962. It is regulated by the Financial ...
(TWSE: 2330) since 1993; in 1997 it became the first Taiwanese company to be listed on the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
(NYSE: TSM). Since 1994, TSMC has had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4% in revenue and a CAGR of 16.1% in earnings. Most of the leading
fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...
semiconductor companies such as
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
,
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
,
ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...
,
Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...
, Marvell,
MediaTek MediaTek Inc. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia ...
, and
Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
, are customers of TSMC, as are emerging companies such as
Allwinner Technology Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd is a fabless semiconductor company that designs mixed-signal systems on a chip (SoC). The company is headquartered in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. It has a sales and technical support office in Shenzhen, Guangdong ...
,
HiSilicon HiSilicon () is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong and wholly owned by Huawei. HiSilicon purchases licenses for CPU designs from ARM Holdings, including the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore, ARM Cortex-M3, ARM Cortex-A7 MP ...
, Spectra7, and
UNISOC UNISOC (), formerly Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. (), is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Shanghai which produces chipsets for mobile phones. UNISOC develops its business in two major fields - consumer electronics and i ...
. Leading programmable logic device companies
Xilinx Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the ...
and previously
Altera Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015. The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-ran ...
also make or made use of TSMC's foundry services. Some
integrated device manufacturer An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products. IDM is often used to refer to a company which handles semiconductor manufacturing in-house, compared to ...
s that have their own fabrication facilities, such as
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
, NXP, STMicroelectronics and
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...
, outsource some of their production to TSMC. At least one semiconductor company, LSI, re-sells TSMC wafers through its ASIC design services and design IP portfolio. TSMC has a global capacity of about thirteen million 300 mm-equivalent wafers per year as of 2020 and makes chips for customers with process nodes from 2 microns to 5 nanometres. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 7-nanometre and 5-nanometre (used by the 2020
Apple A14 The Apple A14 Bionic is a 64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address b ...
and M1 SoC, as well as the MediaTek Dimensity 8100) production capabilities, and the first to commercialize extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology in high volume.


History

The company has been increasing and upgrading its manufacturing capacity for most of its existence, although influenced by the demand cycles of the semiconductor industry. In 2011, the company planned to increase research and development expenditures by almost 39% to NT$50 billion to fend off growing competition. The company also planned to expand capacity by 30% in 2011 to meet strong market demand. In May 2014, TSMC's board of directors approved capital appropriations of US$568 million to establish, convert, and upgrade advanced technology capacity after the company forecast higher than expected demand. In August 2014, TSMC's board of directors approved additional capital appropriations of US$3.05 billion. In 2011, it was reported that TSMC had begun trial production of the A5 SoC and A6 SoCs for Apple's
iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...
and iPhone devices. According to reports, as of May 2014, Apple is sourcing its new A8 and A8X SoCs from TSMC and later sourced the A9 SoC with both TSMC and Samsung (to increase volume for iPhone 6S launch) with the A9X being exclusively made by TSMC, thus resolving the issue of sourcing a chip in two different microarchitecture sizes. Apple has become TSMC's most important customer. In October 2014,
ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...
and TSMC announced a new multi-year agreement for the development of ARM based 10 nm
FinFET A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, ...
processors. In 2020, TSMC became the first semiconductor company in the world to sign up for RE100, pledging to use 100% renewable energy by 2050. TSMC accounts for roughly 5% of the energy consumption in Taiwan, exceeding that of the capital city Taipei. This initiative was thus expected to accelerate the transformation to renewable energy in the country. TSMC results for 2020 were net income of US$17.60 billion on consolidated revenue of US$45.51 billion, which increased 57.5 percent and 31.4 percent respectively from the 2019 level of US$11.18 billion net income and US$34.63 billion consolidated revenue. Its market capitalization was over $550 billion in April 2021. TSMC's revenue in the first quarter of 2020 reached US$10 billion, while its market capitalization was US$254 billion. TSMC's market capitalization reached a value of NT$1.9 trillion (US$63.4 billion) in December 2010. It was ranked 70th in the FT Global 500 2013 list of the world's most highly valued companies with a capitalization of US$86.7 billion, while reaching US$110 billion in May 2014. In March 2017, TSMC's market capitalization surpassed that of semiconductor giant
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
for the first time, hitting NT$5.14 trillion (US$168.4 billion), with Intel's at US$165.7 billion. On June 27, 2020, TSMC briefly became the world's 10th most valuable company, with a market capitalization of US$410 billion. In July 2020, TSMC confirmed it would halt the shipment of silicon wafers to Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer
Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...
and its subsidiary
HiSilicon HiSilicon () is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong and wholly owned by Huawei. HiSilicon purchases licenses for CPU designs from ARM Holdings, including the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore, ARM Cortex-M3, ARM Cortex-A7 MP ...
by the 14th of September. As the risk of a war between Taiwan and the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
increases, TSMC and its investors have explored options to mitigate the consequences of such an event. Since the beginning of the 2020s, TSMC has expanded its operations outside of the island of Taiwan, opening new fabs in Japan and the United States, with further plans for expansion into Germany. In November 2020, officials in
Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the on ...
in the United States approved TSMC's plan to build a $12 billion chip plant in the city. The decision to locate a plant in the US came after the
Trump administration Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory ...
warned about the issues concerning the world's electronics made outside of the U.S. In 2021, news reports claimed that the facility might be tripled to roughly a $35 billion investment with six factories. Following nearly a year of public controversy surrounding its COVID-19 vaccine shortage, with only about 10% of its 23.5 million population vaccinated; in June 2021, Taiwan agreed to allow TSMC and
Foxconn Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Hon Hai Technology Group in China and Taiwan and Foxconn internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer established in 1974 with headquarters in Tucheng, New ...
to jointly negotiate purchasing COVID-19 vaccines on its behalf. In July 2021,
BioNTech BioNTech SE ( ; or short for Biopharmaceutical New Technologies) is a German biotechnology company based in Mainz that develops and manufactures active immunotherapies for patient-specific approaches to the treatment of diseases. It develop ...
's Chinese sales agent Fosun Pharma announced that the two technology manufacturers had reached an agreement to purchase 10 million BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines from Germany for Taiwan. TSMC and Foxconn pledged to each buy five million doses for up to $175 million, for donation to Taiwan's vaccination program. Due to the 2020–2022 global semiconductor shortage, United Microelectronics raised prices approximately 7–9 percent, and prices for TSMC's more mature processors will be raised by about 20 percent. In November 2021, TSMC and
Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
announced that TSMC would be establishing a new subsidiary named Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM) in
Kumamoto is the capital city of Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 738,907 and a population density of 1,893 people per km2. The total area is 390.32 km2. had a population of 1,461,000, ...
, Japan. The new subsidiary will manufacture 22 and 28-nanometer processes. The initial investment will be approximately $7 billion, with Sony investing approximately $500 million for a less than 20% stake. Construction of the fabrication plant is expected to start in 2022, with production targeted to begin two years later in 2024. In July 2022, TSMC announced the company had posted a record profit in the second quarter, with net income up 76.4 percent year-over-year. The company saw steady growth in the automotive and data center sectors with some weakness in the consumer market. Some of the
capital expenditures Capital expenditure or capital expense (capex or CAPEX) is the money an organization or corporate entity spends to buy, maintain, or improve its fixed assets, such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, or land. It is considered a capital expenditure ...
are projected to be pushed up to 2023. In the third quarter of 2022,
Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float (the retained premiu ...
disclosed purchase of 60 million shares in TSMC, acquiring a $4.1 billion stake, making it one of its largest holdings in a technology company. In December 2022, TSMC announced its plans to triple its investment in the Arizona plants. The whole deal about building those plants and TSMC investing in them came as the US response to the growing tensions with China and the supply chain disruption that has led to chip shortages.


Patent dispute with GlobalFoundries

On 26 August 2019,
GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF or GloFo) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, ...
filed several patent infringement lawsuits against TSMC in the US and Germany claiming that TSMC's 7 nm, 10 nm, 12 nm, 16 nm, and 28 nm nodes infringed 16 of their patents. GlobalFoundries named twenty defendants. TSMC said that they were confident that the allegations were baseless. On 1 October 2019, TSMC filed patent infringement lawsuits against GlobalFoundries in the US, Germany and Singapore, claiming that GlobalFoundries' 12 nm, 14 nm, 22 nm, 28 nm and 40 nm nodes infringed 25 of their patents. On 29 October 2019, TSMC and GlobalFoundries announced a resolution to the dispute, agreeing to a life-of-patents cross-license for all of their existing semiconductor patents and new patents for the next 10 years.


Sales and market trends

TSMC and the rest of the foundry industry are exposed to the cyclical industrial dynamics of the semiconductor industry. TSMC must ensure its production capacity to meet strong customer demand during upturns. However, during downturns, it must contend with excess capacity because of weak demand and the high fixed costs associated with its manufacturing facilities. As a result, the company's financial results tend to fluctuate with a cycle time of a few years. This is more apparent in earnings than revenues because of the general trend of revenue and capacity growth. TSMC's business has generally also been seasonal, with a peak in Q3 and a low in Q1. In 2014, TSMC was at the forefront of the foundry industry for high-performance, low-power applications, leading major smartphone chip companies such as Qualcomm, Mediatek and Apple to place an increasing amount of orders. While the competitors in the foundry industry (primarily
GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries Inc. (GF or GloFo) is a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Malta, New York. Created by the divestiture of the manufacturing arm of AMD, ...
and
United Microelectronics Corporation United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC; ) is a Taiwanese company based in Hsinchu, Taiwan. It was founded as Taiwan's first semiconductor company in 1980 as a spin-off of the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) ...
) have encountered difficulties ramping leading-edge 28 nm capacity, the leading
Integrated Device Manufacturer An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products. IDM is often used to refer to a company which handles semiconductor manufacturing in-house, compared to ...
s such as
Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
and
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
that seek to offer foundry capacity to third parties were also unable to match the requirements for advanced mobile applications. For most of 2014, TSMC saw a continuing increase in revenues due to increased demand, primarily due to chips for smartphone applications. TSMC raised its financial guidance in March 2014 and posted ‘unseasonably strong’ first-quarter results. For Q2 2014, revenues came in at NT$183 billion, with 28 nm technology business growing more than 30% from the previous quarter. Lead times for chip orders at TSMC increased due to a tight capacity situation, putting fabless chip companies at risk of not meeting their sales expectations or shipment schedules, and in August 2014 it was reported that TSMC's production capacity for the fourth quarter of 2014 was already almost fully booked, a scenario that had not occurred for many years, which was described as being due to a ripple-effect due to TSMC landing CPU orders from Apple. However, monthly sales for 2014 peaked in October, decreasing by 10% in November due to cautious inventory adjustment actions taken by some of its customers. TSMC's revenue for 2014 saw growth of 28% over the previous year, while TSMC forecasted that revenue for 2015 would grow by 15 to 20 percent from 2014, thanks to strong demand for its 20 nm process, new 16 nm FinFET process technology as well as continuing demand for 28 nm, and demand for less advanced chip fabrication in its 200mm fabs.


Technologies

TSMC's N7+ is the first commercially available extreme-ultraviolet lithographic process in the semiconductor industry. It uses ultraviolet patterning and enables more acute circuits to be implemented on the silicon. N7+ offers a 15-20% higher transistor density and 10% reduction in power consumption than previous technology. The N7 achieved the fastest ever volume time to market, faster than 10 nm and 16 nm. The N5 iteration doubles transistor density and improves performance by an additional 15%.


Production capabilities

On 300 mm wafers, TSMC has silicon lithography on node sizes: * 0.13 μm (options: general-purpose (G), low-power (LP), high-performance low-voltage (LV)). * 90 nm (based upon 80GC from Q4/2006), * 65 nm (options: general-purpose (GP), low-power (LP), ultra-low power (ULP), LPG). * 55 nm (options: general-purpose (GP), low-power (LP)). * 40 nm (options: general-purpose (GP), low-power (LP), ultra-low power (ULP)). * 28 nm (options: high-performance (HP), high-performance mobile (HPM), high-performance computing (HPC), high-performance low-power (HPL), low-power (LP), high-performance computing Plus (HPC+), ultra-low power (ULP)) with HKMG. * 22 nm (options: ultra-low power (ULP), ultra-low leakage (ULL)) * 20 nm * 16 nm (options: FinFET (FF), FinFET Plus (FF+), FinFET Compact (FFC)) * 12 nm (options: FinFET Compact (FFC), FinFET
NVIDIA Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
(FFN)), enhanced version of 16 nm process. *
10 nm The following are examples of orders of magnitude for different lengths. __TOC__ Overview Detailed list To help compare different orders of magnitude, the following list describes various lengths between 1.6 \times 10^ metres and 10 ...
(options: FinFET (FF)) * 7 nm (options: FinFET (FF), FinFET Plus (FF+), FinFET Pro (FFP), high-performance computing (HPC)) * 6 nm (options: FinFET (FF)), risk production starting in Q1 2020, enhanced version of 7 nm process. *
5 nm In semiconductor manufacturing, the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems defines the 5  nm process as the MOSFET technology node following the 7 nm node. In 2020, Samsung and TSMC entered volume production of 5 nm chips, ...
(options: FinFET (FF)). * 4 nm (options: FinFET (FF)). risk production starting in 2021, enhanced version of 5 nm process. It also offers " design for manufacturing" (DFM) customer services. In press publications, these processes will often be referenced, for example, for the mobile variant, simply by 7''nmFinFET'' or even more briefly by 7FF. TSMC is at the beginning of 2019 advertising N7+, N7, and N6 as its leading edge technologies, and announced its intention of adding a
3 nanometer In semiconductor manufacturing, the 3 nm process is the next die shrink after the 5 nanometer MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) technology node. , Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC plans to put a 3 nm, se ...
(3 nm)
semiconductor node A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
into commercial production for 2022. TSMC's 3 nm process will still use
FinFET A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, ...
(fin field-effect transistor) technology. As of June 2020, TSMC is the manufacturer selected for production of
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
's 5 nanometer
ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...
processors, as "the company plans to eventually transition the entire Mac lineup to its Arm-based processors, including the priciest desktop computers". In July 2020, TSMC signed a 20-year deal with Ørsted to buy the entire production of two offshore wind farms under development off Taiwan's west coast. At the time of its signing, it was the world's largest corporate
green energy Energy is sustainable if it "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Most definitions of sustainable energy include considerations of environmental aspects such as greenh ...
order ever made. In July 2021, both Apple and Intel were reported to be testing their proprietary chip designs with TSMC's 3 nm production.


Facilities

Apart from its main base of operations in Hsinchu in Northern Taiwan, where several of its fab facilities are located, it also has leading-edge fabs in
Southern Taiwan The regions of Taiwan are based on the historical administrative divisions. However, most of the definitions are not precise. Division into two regions * Eastern and Western Taiwan: the Central Mountain Range separates Taiwan into east and west. :* ...
and
Central Taiwan The regions of Taiwan are based on the historical administrative divisions. However, most of the definitions are not precise. Division into two regions * Eastern and Western Taiwan: the Central Mountain Range separates Taiwan into east and west. : ...
, with other fabs located at its subsidiaries TSMC China in
Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...
, China, WaferTech in
Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...
, United States, and SSMC in Singapore, and it has offices in China, Europe, India, Japan, North America, and South Korea. The following fabs were in operation in 2020: * Four 300 mm "GIGAFABs" in operation in Taiwan: Fab 12 (Hsinchu), 14 (Tainan), 15 (Taichung), 18 (Tainan) * Four 200 mm
wafer A wafer is a crisp, often sweet, very thin, flat, light and dry biscuit, often used to decorate ice cream, and also used as a garnish on some sweet dishes. Wafers can also be made into cookies with cream flavoring sandwiched between them. They ...
fabs in full operation in Taiwan: Fab 3, 5, 8 (Hsinchu), 6 (Tainan) * TSMC China Company Limited, 200 mm: Fab 10 (Shanghai) * TSMC Nanjing Company Limited, 300 mm: Fab 16 (Nanjing) * WaferTech L.L.C., TSMC's wholly owned US subsidiary, a 200 mm fab: Fab 11 ( Camas, Washington) * SSMC (Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Co.), a
joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and economic risk, risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four rea ...
with NXP Semiconductors in
Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
, 200 mm, where production started at the end of 2002 * One 150 mm wafer fab in full operation in Taiwan: Fab 2 (Hsinchu) Fab partially online as of 2021: * Fab 18, 300 mm (Tainan), phase 3 and 4 Fab planned as of 2021: * Arizona, USA (under construction November 2021, anticipated to use 5 nm process) * Kumamoto, Japan (planned groundbreaking in 2021, anticipated to use 22 nm and 28 nm process) TSMC has four Backend Fabs under operation: Fab 1 (Hsinchu), 2 (Tainan), 3 (Taoyuan City), and 5 (Taichung) In 2020, TSMC announced a planned fab in
Phoenix Phoenix most often refers to: * Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore * Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States Phoenix may also refer to: Mythology Greek mythological figures * Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...
,
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, the US, intended to begin production by 2024 at a rate of 20,000 wafers per month. As of 2020, TSMC announced that it would bring its newest 5 nm process to the Arizona facility, a significant break from its prior practice of limiting US fabs to older technologies. However, the Arizona plant will not be fully operational until 2024, when the 5 nm process is projected to be replaced by TSMC's 3 nm process as the latest technology. At launch it will be the most advanced fab in the United States. TSMC plans to spend $12 billion on the project over eight years, beginning in 2021. It will create 1,900 jobs directly. The investment of US$9.4 billion to build its third 300mm wafer fabrication facility in Central Taiwan Science Park (Fab 15) was originally announced in 2010. The facility was expected to manufacture over 100,000 wafers a month and generate US$5 billion per year of revenue. TSMC has continued to expand advanced 28 nm manufacturing capacity at Fab 15. On 12 January 2011, TSMC announced the acquisition of land from
Powerchip Semiconductor Powerchip Technology Corporation () manufactures and sells semiconductor products, in particular Semiconductor memory, memory chips and other integrated circuits. As of 2020, the company was the 7th largest semiconductor foundry in the world ...
for NT$2.9 billion (US$96 million) to build two additional 300mm fabs (Fab 12B) to cope with increasing global demand.


WaferTech subsidiary

WaferTech, a subsidiary of TSMC, is a pure-play semiconductor foundry employing 1,100 workers, located in Camas, Washington, United States, the second-largest pure-play foundry in the United States. The largest is GlobalFoundries Fab 8 in
Malta, New York Malta is a town in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The town is in the central part of the county and is south of Saratoga Springs. The population was 17,130 as of the 2020 census. Malta, along with Stillwater, is home to the Luther F ...
, which employs over 3,000 workers with over under one roof. WaferTech was established in June 1996 as a joint venture with TSMC,
Altera Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015. The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-ran ...
, Analog Devices, and
ISSI ''Issi'' (meaning "cold" in Greenlandic) is a plateosaurid dinosaur described in 2021 from the Late Triassic Fleming Fjord Formation of Greenland. It contains one species, ''Issi saaneq''; the full binomial name means "cold bones". Fossils of ...
as key partners. The four companies and minor individual investors placed US$1.2 billion into this venture, which was at the time the single largest startup investment in the state of Washington. The company started production in July 1998 in its 200mm semiconductor fabrication plant. Its first product was a 0.35 micrometer part for Altera. TSMC bought out the joint venture partners in 2000 and acquired full control, operating it as a fully owned subsidiary. WaferTech is based in Camas, outside Portland,
Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...
. The WaferTech campus contains a complex housed on . The main fabrication facility consists of a 200mm wafer fabrication plant. In 2015, Dr. Tsung Kuo was named company president and fab director of WaferTech.


See also

* 5 nanometer * List of companies of Taiwan *
List of semiconductor fabrication plants This is a list of semiconductor fabrication plants. A semiconductor fabrication plant is where integrated circuits (ICs), also known as microchips, are manufactured. They are either operated by Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) who design a ...
* Moore's law * Pure-play semiconductor foundry * Quantum tunnelling *
Semiconductor device fabrication Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...
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Semiconductor industry in Taiwan The Taiwanese semiconductor industry, including IC manufacturing, design, and packing, forms a major part of Taiwan's IT industry. Due to its strong capabilities in OEM wafer manufacturing and a complete industry supply chain, Taiwan has been able ...
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United Microelectronics Corporation United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC; ) is a Taiwanese company based in Hsinchu, Taiwan. It was founded as Taiwan's first semiconductor company in 1980 as a spin-off of the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) ...
* Very-large-scale integration


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* * {{authority control Electronics companies established in 1987 Taiwanese companies established in 1987 1993 initial public offerings Manufacturing companies based in Hsinchu Companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Electronics companies of Taiwan Semiconductor companies of Taiwan Foundry semiconductor companies Taiwanese brands Technology companies of Taiwan Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange