Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, which has started construction of a wafer fab in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture, said on Friday that it has no concrete plans to build a second plant in Japan.
TSMC’s comments came after Cliff Hou (???), the company’s senior vice president of Europe and Asia sales and corporate research, said in a recent interview with Tokyo TV’s World Business Satellite that his company did not rule out the possibility of building a second plant in Kumamoto.
Hou said TSMC needs to have a good understanding of how well the first fab in Kumamoto performs before making a decision on a second facility in the prefecture.
In response, TSMC said Friday it has no concrete plans for new investments in Japan, but emphasized that the company has not ruled out the possibility of building a second fab in the country.
Cited by international business wires, Japan’s Economic Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said a second fab by TSMC will be very welcome in Japan, adding that his country will do its best to attract foreign semiconductor suppliers to invest in the country.
TSMC’s possible second wafer plant in Japan has been talked up in the news media, in particular after the chipmaker announced on Tuesday that it will raise its investment in the U.S. state of Arizona to US$40 billion from the original US$12 billion by building a second fab.
The chipmaker made the announcement right before it held a first tool-in ceremony on Tuesday for its first fab in Arizona, which is currently under construction, to mark the installation of the first batch of production equipment. U.S. President Joe Biden attended the ceremony, expressing his gratitude to TSMC for coming to the United States.
In November 2021, TSMC announced it would spend up to US$2.12 billion in equity investment on the wafer fab in Kumamoto, Japan to establish a TSMC-majority-owned subsidiary in the country to provide foundry services, with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp. (SSS) taking a stake of up to 20 percent in the new company.
After the joint venture, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, Inc. (JASM), was set up, TSMC broke ground on the Kumamoto wafer plant in April 2022 with mass production scheduled to start by the end of 2024.
The plant will use the Taiwanese chipmaker’s mature 22-nanometer and 28nm processes as well as the 12nm and 16nm FinField-effect-transistor (FinFET) processes to meet demand in the market.
The FinFET technology is a 3D transistor structure that allows a chip to run faster using the same amount of power or to run at the same speed on reduced power.
Market analysts said the move by TSMC to set up JASM was intended to reinforce ties and cooperation with Sony, one of the Taiwanese chipmaker’s most important clients, in specialty process development as the Japanese company is a leading global supplier of CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) image sensors, or CIS.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel