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Taiwan chip-making trio combine to build five new cutting-edge factories

Chip-building giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), along with Powerchip Semiconductor and Vanguard will invest a combined $14.7 billion USD on five new chip fabrication plants.

The new facilities, situated at the Hsinchu Science Park, will include an advanced 300mm wafer plant to make computer and other electronic chips and will create an estimated 10,000 new jobs. TSMC alone will hire 3,000 additional workers.

“We will have both R&D and manufacturing in the new plants,” said TSMC spokesman J.H. Tzeng to Reuters.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract maker of semiconductors, said that it will contribute to just over a third of the overall investment into the new plants. TSMC will be responsible for the fourth and fifth phases of Fab 12 in the northern Taiwan industrial area, according to Trading Markets.

“Phases four and five will provide manufacturing services as well,” Tzeng added. “Our plan is to invest five billion US dollars there for research and development of 32nm, 22nm and 15nm process technologies.”

TSMC’s current 12-inch wafer facilities focus on 90nm, 65nm and 45nm technologies. In 2006, TSMC approved a $1.13 billion project to expand the company’s 300mm wafer fabrication plants.  Famous TSMC clients include NVIDIA and AMD's graphics division.

TSMC on Monday posted a 38 percent rise in sales as compared to the same period a year earlier, though were 6 percent below the previous month’s performance.

The five new plants are expected to reach an estimated production value of $9.8 billion yearly between the three companies.

Powerchip, Taiwan’s largest memory chip maker, will spend $8.1 billion on the factories to create more advanced memory technologies, reported Bloomberg.

Frank Huang, chairman of Powerchip, believes that there will be great demand for chips later this year. “There will be a chip shortage from the fourth quarter of this year,” he said at the groundbreaking ceremony.

Existing Powerchip facilities will be re-tooled for the production of NAND flash technologies, popularly used for storage in portable devices such as MP3 players and mobiles. Powerchip also has additional factories dedicated to making flash memory.

The upcoming facilities in the Hsinchu Science Park will expand Powerchip’s DRAM capacity by 30,000 wafers monthly, taking the company to 260,000 wafers by the end of 2009.

Vanguard, the third company investing in the new facilities, was not available to comment on its projections for the endeavor.

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Who else makes chips?
By BigToque on 3/12/2008 6:59:08 PM , Rating: 2
I really only know of Intel, AMD and TSMC.

Who else makes chips?




RE: Who else makes chips?
By murphyslabrat on 3/12/2008 7:11:00 PM , Rating: 5
Frito Lay


RE: Who else makes chips?
By ImSpartacus on 3/12/08, Rating: 0
RE: Who else makes chips?
By cypherl on 3/12/2008 7:41:12 PM , Rating: 2
touché my fritolay friend. Well played, well played indeed.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By PAPutzback on 3/13/2008 9:20:49 AM , Rating: 2
Rock on. It's good to start a Monday with a laugh. Actually its payday so it is the one day of the week that doesn't feel like a Monday.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By murphyslabrat on 3/14/2008 2:48:12 PM , Rating: 2
Dude had to be setting that up, but it was nice that I was able to make the comment.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By MetaDFF on 3/12/2008 8:10:21 PM , Rating: 2
There are lots of contract fabs (according to wiki) the top 10 are:
1. TSMC (Taiwan)
2. UMC Group (Taiwan)
3. Chartered (Singapore)
4. SMIC (China)
5. Dongbu/Anam (South Korea)
6. SSMC (Singapore)
7. HHNEC (China)
8. Jazz Semiconductor (U.S.)
9. Silterra (Malaysia)
10. X-Fab (Europe)

Other big ones are ST-Microelectronics and IBM.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By emboss on 3/12/2008 9:26:25 PM , Rating: 2
There's also TI (second only to Intel by volume IIRC, partially thanks to the cellphone/DSP market) and Philips. And all the various RAM manufacturers, Samsung producing the most.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By Eskimo on 3/12/2008 11:57:33 PM , Rating: 2
TI is 4th. Rankings are measured in revenue. Top 10 for 2007 was:
1) Intel
2) Samsung
3) Toshiba
4) TI
5) ST Micro
6) Infineon + Qimonda
7) Hynix
8) Renesas
9) NXP (formerly Philips)
10)NEC

If you include foundries TSMC would fit in right under ST. AMD usually hovers somewhere around #11.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By Samus on 3/13/2008 2:47:11 AM , Rating: 2
Where the hell is Micron? Are the bust yet?


RE: Who else makes chips?
By erikejw on 3/13/2008 11:13:01 AM , Rating: 2
Someone bought them I think.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By Eskimo on 3/13/2008 11:12:08 PM , Rating: 2
Micron is down at #15 or thereabouts, down with IBM. Micron's only the 4th largest DRAM manufacturer now and their flash business hasn't delivered appreciable revenue yet.

Micron and IBM just get an disproportionate amount of media coverage in the US because they are American companies.


RE: Who else makes chips?
By PB PM on 3/12/2008 8:24:17 PM , Rating: 3
Another would be Freescale Semiconductor (spin off of Motorola in 2001), most for embedded devices in cars, and things like that though so its not well known.


TSMC -> 32nm, 22nm and 15nm process technologies
By vladio on 3/12/08, Rating: -1
By Warren21 on 3/12/2008 6:42:11 PM , Rating: 2
Am I the only one who misses the point of this post...?


By murphyslabrat on 3/12/2008 7:12:20 PM , Rating: 2
He's complaining about Jobs lost in America, and chiding us for being excited about getting cheaper electronics....oh, and that the 3000 jobs made is insignificant.


By ImSpartacus on 3/12/2008 7:40:56 PM , Rating: 2
Then why is it called " TSMC -> 32nm, 22nm and 15nm process technologies", why not "blah blah jobs, blah"?


By Amiga500 on 3/12/2008 8:16:29 PM , Rating: 5
Heading should have been...

"They tuk arr jooooobbbbbsssss"


By eye smite on 3/13/2008 7:17:20 AM , Rating: 2
You all can joke about it as much as you want, but in the last 7 yrs doing tech support I've been laid off because the jobs were outsourced overseas. It certainly wasn't because they could do it better, but because they could do it dirt cheap. Taking care of customers is not an important consideration for companies now days, can't wait for that to backlash in their faces, but please, keep joking about it and we'll just wait for the day it happens to you. Myself, I'm lucky to have multiple sclerosis, just got my SS disability stuff all squared away and will enjoy getting paid monthly for the rest of my life by your taxpayer dollars, all the while running a computer repair service under the radar from the irs out of my garage.


By paydirt on 3/13/2008 9:20:04 AM , Rating: 2
The Great Depression was caused by two things. (1) the U.S. government did not guarantee deposits and 40% of all deposits (2) THE U.S. IMPOSED TARIFFS ON FOREIGN GOODS TO "PROTECT" JOBS/BUSINESS.

Protectionist measures only increase any flight of capital and jobs away from the country being protectionist. For a modern-day example, look at Venezuela.