Taiwanese company TSMC is expanding its production facilities not only in the US and Japan, but also in Germany. The ESMC joint venture, located at Fab 24, which is currently under construction, is expected to begin producing components using mature process technologies by the end of next year. The equipment freed up during the modernization of its Taiwanese fabs will be sent by TSMC to Germany.
The resource reports this. Citing the Taiwanese publication Economic Daily, TSMC is currently upgrading two parts of its Fab 15 facility in Taiwan, which have different specializations. Fab 15A uses so-called DUV lithography, producing 28-nm and 22-nm chips, but plans to transition to 4-nm production in the foreseeable future. The freed-up equipment for producing 22-nm and 28-nm chips will be sent to Germany.
Nearby, Fab 15B produces chips using the more modern N7+ technology, but will soon switch to N5 and N3 technologies. EUV equipment has long been used there, so this migration is feasible. In total, TSMC plans to spend approximately $3,2 billion on upgrading Fab 15. The Taiwanese company is facing growing demand for advanced lithography, which accounts for approximately 75% of its revenue, so it will be disposing of mature processes. At the same time, by German industry standards, 28nm and 22nm technologies are quite in demand, as they will be used to produce chips for automotive electronic systems. This opens the possibility for TSMC to ship its no longer needed Taiwanese equipment to Germany for these production processes.
Sources:
Source: 3dnews.ru
