News
TSMC
considering expanding investment in U.S., Japan
07/15/2021
Taipei, July 15 (CNA) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's
largest contract chipmaker, said Thursday it is considering expanding investment
in the United States and Japan in order to meet strong demand from its customers.
At an online investor conference, TSMC Chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) said construction is progressing quickly on a planned US$12 billion advanced wafer plant in the U.S. state of Arizona, while the company's first batch of U.S. hires arrived in Taiwan in late April for training on its 5-nanometer production technology.
According to Liu, TSMC plans to begin installing production equipment at the factory in the second half of 2022, with the aim of producing 20,000 wafers per month using the 5nm technology by the first quarter of 2024.
Given the support it has received from customers to expand production capacity in the U.S., TSMC is also not ruling out a "second phase" expansion at the Arizona plant, Liu said.
Meanwhile, in terms of Japan, Chief Executive Officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) noted that TSMC is establishing a three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) R&D facility in the country to meet rising demand in the high-performance computing (HPC) market.
Although TSMC currently has no plans to undertake 3D IC packaging in Japan, it has not ruled out the possibility of setting up a chip manufacturing plant there, Wei said.
TSMC also on Thursday released its latest earnings results, announcing a net profit for the second quarter of NT$134.36 billion (US$4.80 billion), down 3.8 percent from a quarter earlier but up 11.2 percent from a year earlier.
In the third quarter, the company said, it expects to see sales growth of 11 percent over the previous quarter.
(By Chang Chien-chung and Matthew Mazzetta)
https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202107150027
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