TodayOn February 24, TSMC's Kumamoto plant (JASM) in Japan opened. Founder Zhang Zhongmou said at the opening ceremony that he believes that JASM can further enhance the resilience of the wafer ** chain and bring a new wave of revival to the Japanese semiconductor industry.
The plant, worth $8.6 billion, started construction in April 2022, trial production in April, and mass production of 12 16nm and 22 28nm mature process chips by the end of the year. TSMC will work with Sony, Denso and Toyota to build a second wafer fab in Kumamoto, which is expected to be operational by the end of 2027, focusing on advanced processes of 6 7 nanometers. Including the first plant, the total investment in JASM will exceed $20 billion.
Japan** has decided to subsidize up to 476 billion yen to the first plant and about 730 billion yen to the second plant. With strong support from Japan, TSMC is reportedly considering a third or even fourth factory.
Mainly based on industrial chain security concerns, TSMC is currently moving some key hardware manufacturing away from its home base in Taiwan. A second plant is currently under construction in Arizona, USA, and another plant is planned in Germany, which will be its first in Europe.
TSMC is one of the best-managed companies in the world and an important one," Warren Buffett said last year. But he sold his $4 billion stake in TSMC because, he said, "I don't like its location." ”
TSMC's customers include Apple and Nvidia. Previously, Nvidia's strong results made people more convinced that global demand for AI semiconductors will be booming. About ninety percent of the world's most advanced chips come from the company.
TSMC updated its news on LinkedIn that its second semiconductor manufacturing base in Arizona, USA, ushered in the "capping" milestone. Significant progress has been made on the first fab (Fab 21) and production is expected to begin in the first half of 2025. "Once operational, our two TSMC Fabs in Arizona will manufacture the most advanced semiconductor technology in the United States, directly create 4,500 high-tech, high-wage jobs, and sustain our customers' leadership in the era of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence for decades."
However, the start of production of the second of the two semiconductor factories under construction in Arizona will be delayed. At the heart of Washington's reinvention of chip manufacturing, this is the latest setback for the project. The CHIPS Act, introduced in 2022, supports the U.S. semiconductor industry with $52.7 billion in subsidies to boost the growth of the domestic industry, and three chip manufacturers have received subsidies so far.
In the late 1990s, TSMC built a wafer fab in Washington state, which for years was costly and a headache. The plant's production costs are still 50% higher than in Taiwan. "The U.S. will increase domestic semiconductor manufacturing to some extent. But all of this comes with a high cost increase, a high unit cost. This will lose competitiveness in the world market. Zhang Zhongmou said.
In his speech at the opening ceremony, Zhang Zhongmou recalled that he visited Japan for the first time in 1968, when he was the vice president of Texas Instruments, responsible for the IC (integrated circuit) industry, and promoted the joint venture between Deyi and Sony. Deyi took a big step forward in 1980 by opening a fab at Narita Airport, only to be sold after he left Deyi.
Zhang Zhongmou said that TSMC was invited to Japan to open a wafer factory in 2019, and he is very happy to be able to turn ideas into concrete actions in the past five years, and believes that JASM will be able to further enhance the resilience of the wafer chain and bring a new wave of revival to the Japanese semiconductor industry.
Zhang Zhongmou also revealed that artificial intelligence-related people and the production capacity he needs. What they need is not tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of wafer production capacity, but more wafer fabs, "three, five or even ten". I can't fully believe it, but the demand should be somewhere in between.
Companies such as Toshiba and Japan's NEC gave Japan a dominant position in microchips in the 1980s, but competition from South Korea and Taiwan has seen Japan's share of the global market drop from more than 50 percent to about 10 percent. Now, Japan will provide up to 4 trillion yen ($26.7 billion) in subsidies** to help triple sales of domestically produced chips to more than 15 trillion yen by 2030. February** Dynamic Incentive ProgramExtended reading:
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