To further expand its production capacity, the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is building three new facilities to manufacture 3nm chips in Tainan, Taiwan. The effort is part of the company’s $120 billion investment to establish new production facilities in the hope of strengthening its grip on the global market.
Nikkie Aisa reports that in Southern Taiwan Science Park in the city of Tainan, TSMC began production at its four facilities, “some of the most advanced chip fabs in the world”, of Apple iPhone processors.
And for the production of the advanced chip built on a 3nm process, the company is investing $30 billion in three new chip fabs, each location costing around $10 billion.
In spite of the U.S. warning against overreliance on Taiwan for chips, TSMC pushes to increase production capacity on the island
Heavily affected by the global chip crisis, the U.S. government not only warned manufacturers against “overreliance” on the island at risk of Chinese invasion but also made efforts to boost domestic chip production by giving large subsidies to chip manufacturers like TSMC.
However, the TSMC has launched an “unprecedented” investment on the island along with establishing production units in Arizona, USA, and Kumamoto, Japan.
No other place in the world [except Taiwan] is seeing such a buildup of chipmaking capacity. Investments for TSMC’s planned U.S. plant in Arizona and its proposed plant in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture will cost $12 billion and $8.6 billion, respectively. Kumamoto lies on the island of Kyushu, which is about the same size as Taiwan.
Taiwan already leads the world in chip production and accounts for over 90% of all capacity in advanced semiconductor devices, data from the Semiconductor Industry Association and other sources shows. The remainder is found in South Korea. – Nikkie Asia
Taiwanese manufacturers believe that their grip on the global chip supply puts them on “equal footing” with Washington and “making concessions too readily would give up that diplomatic leverage”; leverage on which TSMC is willing to spend $120 billion.
