TSMC's market cap is 9th highest in world - Tesla is 8th

[TruckElectric]

Taipei, Dec. 8 (CNA) The market capitalization of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) rose to ninth in the world after its American depositary receipts (ADRs) scored solid gains overnight.

TSMC's market cap hit US$551.75 billion after its ADRs rose US$2.66 or 2.56 percent to close at a new high of US$106.39 in the United States, passing investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which is managed by investment guru Warren Buffett, to take the ninth spot.

After the U.S. markets closed, the market cap of Berkshire Hathaway stood at US$537.30 billion.

In addition, strong buying amid optimism toward its business prospects has brought TSMC's market cap closer to electric car brand Tesla Inc., which had a market cap of US$608.33 billion, the world's eighth highest.

After the solid gains in ADRs overnight, TSMC shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange rose Tuesday, extending momentum from a recent strong showing as investors who have been convinced by the chipmaker's sound fundamentals scrambled to pick up the stock.

As of 11:45 a.m., TSMC shares, the most heavily weighted stock on the local market, had gained 1.17 percent to NT$520.00 (US$18.37) on the local main board, where the benchmark weighted index, or the Taiex, was up 0.49 percent at 14,325.76 points. The stock hit a historic closing high of NT$514.00 on Monday.

Since the beginning of this year, TSMC shares had soared about 55.3 percent as of Monday, pushing up the Taiex by almost 19 percent to a new closing high of 14,256.60.

A U.S. brokerage has raised its target price on TSMC shares from NT$561 to NT$607, while leaving a "buy" rating on the stock unchanged. The American securities house expressed optimism at TSMC's efforts to develop the advanced 5 nanometer process and secure a higher share of the global market.

The brokerage said TSMC's 5nm process has been in great demand in the wake of rising demand for emerging technologies such as 5G applications, high performance computing devices and artificial intelligence.

The 5nm process is TSMC's latest technology to go into mass production since the second quarter of this year. In the third quarter, the process accounted for about 8 percent of total sales.

In addition, analysts said TSMC is benefiting from a move by Apple Inc. to release the self-developed M1 processor for production of the Mac series as the Taiwanese chipmaker serves as a contract maker for the device.

In addition, Apple is expected to launch new processors next year for Mac production, and TSMC, which leads its peers in high-end technology development, is expected to secure orders, analysts said.

SOURCE: Focus Taiwan News Channel


Chip war between Samsung and TSMC

If there was a nuclear arms race during the cold war, now we are witnessing an arms race in silicon chips. Big chipmakers like TSMC have announced billions of dollars of new investment, and others are opting for massive mergers and acquisitions.

Samsung Electronics, which is the world’s biggest memory chipmaker, is also in the race. $121 billion has been pledged so it becomes the No.1 player in what it calls non-memory sector.

The ultimate competitor is Taiwan’s TSMC, as it is the top supplier with a dominant market share in that field.

We will pin down Samsung’s strategies in this battle and why it matters to you.

What is the Samsung Electronics chief strategy for the non-memory business?

Before we jump into the strategy, we need to talk about what the non-memory business exactly is. The term is more frequently used by the Korean press and chipmakers to indicate the chips other than memory chips. So they include central processing units for computers, application processors for smartphones and camera sensors.

The area also includes what is called foundry, which means building the microprocessors by contract based on the designs from outside customers.

As I mentioned before, Samsung is the largest manufacturer of memory chips, but its portion in foundry business is less than a third of the market share of TSMC.

To close the gap, Samsung will invest $121 billion into non-memory sector by 2030, proclaiming that it will become the top player in the sector.

A lot of that will be used to develop more advanced chip manufacturing processes, and the essence of that process is to shrink the node size.

Samsung and TSMC currently use 5-nanometer processes or above as the two are the only chipmakers capable of achieving the size. Both are planning to introduce 3-nanometer process in 2022.

What is the significance and impact of adopting 3-nanometer chips?

So you now understand Samsung is not “the player” in the playground.

But Samsung wants to shake off that image when it comes to release speed and functionality. TSMC was several months or at least a quarter ahead in mass producing a new generation of chip based on smaller node sizes.

For instance, it began mass-producing 7-nanometer chips in the second quarter of 2018, while Samsung got there in the first quarter in 2019. The gap narrowed for 5-nanometer chips, with TSMC releasing them in the first half of this year and Samsung in the third quarter.

For the planned 3-nanometer product, the gap will be further narrowed in since the two chipmakers appear to be targeting end-2022 as the time for mass-production.

TSMC went more specific to say the second half of 2022, while Samsung only mentioned the year.

The Korean tech company should also prove technical advancement in the development of 3-nanometer chips because it plans to use a new technology called Gate-All-Around FET ahead of TSMC.

The technique is designed to enhance power density of the chips and thus improve energy efficiency, as the new design allows for more expanded and flexible current flows across channels at transistor gate compared to the widely used finFET technique.

TSMC said it will use the technique for the 2-nanometer chips.

More generally, Samsung would also be able to cut the production cost with smaller processes.

Why does the nanometer size matter?

You might have a sense that all the chip makers are obsessed with that nanometer size as you can see in tons of press releases marking the progress in their node size.

It is important because the process size is directly linked with the chip’s performance. The chip manufacturing process is like placing as many people as possible in a schoolyard to get something done. So, a wafer – a thin disc-shaped piece silicon – can be described as a schoolyard and transistors as people.

So, we can say that putting as many transistors on a wafer helps increase performance of an end chip product, and this is why transistor density should go up for better performance.

And the node size refers to the distance between transistors on a chip. The smaller the number, the more high-performing the chips while consuming less energy.

The chips using the 7-nanometer process have approximately 130 to 230 million transistors per square millimeter.

What is the benefit of the 3-nanometer chip from the consumer perspective?

The introduction of the new generation chip is more about improving the processing speed and energy consumption of electronic devices than enabling new services that we’ve never experienced before.

The better performance could be experienced on electronic devices with the 3-nanometer chip — including smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Technically, the smaller node size could provide the end product in smaller sizes.

But those in the semiconductor industry said that the difference is not significant enough to be felt by consumers, since the chips that we are using now are already miniscule.


SOURCE: Korea JoongAng Daily

Advertisement

 

[TruckElectric]

TSMC Reveals a Major Breakthrough Process coming to their 2024 2nm Processors that will Power Future Apple Devices



Last Wednesday Patently Apple posted a report titled "Samsung Vows to overtake TSMC's Chip Business by 2022 and Aims to Win back Apple's chip Business." The report noted that Samsung’s aim is in line with TSMC’s target of offering volume production of 3nm chips in the second half of 2022. Though Samsung also hopes to go one better by adopting what’s known as the Gate-All-Around technique, regarded by some as game-changing technology that can more precisely control current flows across channels, shrink chip areas and lower power consumption. TSMC had opted for the more established FinFET structure for its 3nm lines."

Of course TSMC wasn't going to let Samsung get away with that announcement and has countered it in a new Taiwanese report which states that "TSMC has made a major internal breakthrough in the 2nm process. It is optimistic that the 2nm process is expected to undergo risky trial production in the second half of 2023, and it can enter volume in 2024. Production stage.

TSMC also stated that the 2nm breakthrough will once again widen the gap with competitors, while continuing Moore's Law and continuing to advance the research and development of 1nm process."

So what is this "breakthrough"? In the 2nm process, TSMC will abandon the FinFET (Fin Field Effect Transistor) that has lasted for many years, and even not use the GAAFET (Surround Gate Field Effect Transistor) that Samsung plans to use on the 3nm process, that is, nanowire (nanowire), but Expand it into "MBCFET" (Multi-Bridge Channel Field Effect Transistor), that is, nanosheet based instead of nanowire as presented in the image below.

From GAAFET to MBCFET, from nanowire to nanosheet, it can be regarded as a leap from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, which can greatly improve circuit control and reduce leakage rate.

TSMC predicts that Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD and other customers are expected to take the lead in adopting its 2nm process.

SOURCE: Patently Apple

 

[TruckElectric]

Samsung expands Texas chip plant in investment race with TSMC

South Korean company angles for top spot amid US-China tech war

Samsung seeks to win chip manufacturing orders from big U.S. tech companies. (Photo courtesy of Samsung)

KOTARO HOSOKAWA, Nikkei staff writerDecember 19, 2020 05:22 JST

SEOUL -- Samsung Electronics will expand its semiconductor factory in Texas to make room for next-generation manufacturing equipment as it seeks to wrestle the title of the world's biggest contract chipmaker away from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.


TSMC has already announced a plan to build a new plant in the state of Arizona. As the U.S. and China vie for high-tech supremacy, the two Asian giants are stepping up spending to carve out a bigger slice of the American market, which is home to such leading tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon that design their own chips but use contractors for production,

Samsung views its Austin, Texas plant playing a vital role in wooing orders from American tech companies. City officials recently began reviewing Samsung's request to rezone a newly acquired 440,000 sq. meter plot -- about 40% of its existing campus in there -- for industrial use. Samsung has said the expansion is part of its preparations for the future, though it has not yet decided how much capacity it will add there and when.


"In order to become the world leader, Samsung needs to attract orders from Apple, Intel and others" who currently work with TSMC, said Lee Seung-woo, chief analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities.

Samsung's Austin factory began mass-producing memory chips in 1997. It entered into contract manufacturing in 2010, with a client list that at one point included Apple.

Despite Samsung pouring $17 billion into the facility over its lifetime, equipment there has become outdated. The factory is believed to only be capable of producing chips with 14-nanometer process nodes -- cutting edge about five years ago, but three generations behind the 5nm process now pioneering the industry. The company could end up investing close to $10 billion on advanced equipment required for new, large-scale orders.

Samsung sees expanding the Austin plant as an important step in its goal of becoming the world's biggest foundry. (Photo courtesy of Samsung Electronics)


Contract chipmakers often do not acquire new equipment until after they sign long-term supply deals with their clients. But Samsung is expected to update its facility while it seeks out new orders, and is also hiring chip-related engineers largely around Silicon Valley.

Samsung has announced plans to invest 133 trillion won ($121 billion) toward its goal of becoming the world leader in memory semiconductors and logic chips by 2030. It is boosting output capacity at its South Korean factory in Pyeongtaek, and could take advanced chipmaking technologies developed at home to the Austin plant as well.

TSMC is currently in the lead technologically. The company was months ahead of Samsung in mass-producing 5nm chips, which it supplies to Apple. TSMC also "has a significant technological edge over Samsung in terms of yield," according to a chipmaking equipment manufacturer.

TSMC held a 54% market share in foundry services in the July-September quarter, compared with Samsung's 19%, according to Taiwanese research company TrendForce. TSMC also leads in terms of market capitalization, despite having only a sixth of Samsung's overall revenue.

The Taiwanese company announced in May that it would build a new chip facility in Arizona for $12 billion, which will break ground next year and is slated to come online in 2024. But it is unclear whether the project, which has secured generous subsidies from the Trump administration, will continue as planned under President-elect Joe Biden.

Samsung could be holding off on making specific plans regarding the Austin expansion until it has a better idea of Biden's policies regarding the semiconductor industry. Although the U.S. possesses advanced know-how in designing chips, Taiwan and South Korea are now the dominant players in production technology. The U.S. wants to see Samsung expand output capacity within its borders, in response to China's state-backed campaign to boost domestic chip production.

Meanwhile, Samsung is also investing in its chip factory in Xi'an, China. With tensions between Beijing and Washington showing no signs of subsiding, the world's semiconductor companies face increasing pressure to find the right balance between the two superpowers.

SOURCE: NIKKEI Asia

 

[rr6013]

WallSt stock valuations, executed at the speed of light, are not grounded by tangibles. It almost defies human expectation of winning against WallSt traders but TSLA stands in a position no other automotive mfg’r has to disrupt and profit from the industry. The world is saying that it is giving Tesla EV’s every chance to succeed.

Elon showing willingness to a merger to scale-up is answering the call. Whether a synergy merger exists to scale Tesla is why the market is holding - waiting.

 

[FullyGrounded]

Tesla is defying all norms. It has from day one, and not looked back. Elon is redefining what is possible, as he doesn't care what the norm was. Elon believes in innovation, and this is carrying him to the top. peace

 

[TruckElectric]

As Chip Rivals Struggle, TSMC Moves In for the Kill

A budget blowout is a signal that the world’s semiconductor giant will go to great lengths to stay on top.

Being the world’s most dominant chipmaker just isn’t enough. Now Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is making a massive move to obliterate rivals.

After posting a record $17 billion in capital expenditure last year, the semiconductor foundry plans to boost that figure by 37% in 2021. That’s a rate of growth not seen since the company’s rebound from the global financial crisis in 2010. At the upper end of its $25 billion to $28 billion forecast, and based on estimates for revenue this year, TSMC will post a spending-to-sales ratio that will surpass 50% for the first time in a decade. Also known as capital intensity, this number came in at 37.9% last year, the median of the past decade.

Naturally, the company can rationalize this blowout budget. As executives said in a Thursday afternoon conference call, business continues to be strong and sometimes you just need to invest for the future. Yet last year’s 31% growth, which justified recent increases in equipment spending, won’t be repeated.

Revenue will average 10% to 15% growth through to 2025, Chief Executive Officer C.C. Wei said. This means it’ll take around four years to “grow into” that 2021 capex number — or get back to a long-term goal of a capital-intensity level in the mid-30s. Executives hinted that this ratio could stay high for a little while, which means that even if spending falls in 2022, it’s still likely to top $21 billion annually for the next few years.

TSMC may want to front-load spending instead of spreading it out. The most obvious reason would be that clients need the capacity now, not tomorrow. There’s such a shortage in output that carmakers are slowing production because they can’t get the chips they need. TSMC certainly doesn’t want to disappoint customers — which include Apple Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Qualcomm Inc., and Nvidia Corp. — so it’s ready to pony up quickly to make things happen.

Any customer left waiting for supply is naturally inclined to shop around, so TSMC has the chance to use its massive might and cash reserves to stamp out such a possibility. Anything it can do to keep business away from rivals could be worth the money.

But there’s another subtext in this bold move.

Those nearest competitors are Samsung Electronics Co. and Intel Corp. The latter is struggling with its own production technology to the point that it may soon end up sending more orders to Taiwan and doing less at home in its own fabs. TSMC surely wants to win those orders instead of letting them go to Samsung.

Further, if TSMC can really prove its value to Intel, that may incentivize a possible plan for the U.S. company to shift to an asset-light model, which would see the maker of computer processors scale down its own manufacturing. This alone would be a long-term boon to TSMC and more than justify a year or two of massive spending.

Then there are lesser rivals like Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp., China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and California-based Globalfoundries Inc. None of them come close in terms of production capabilities, but being able to pick up leftover orders for older technologies would at least keep these smaller companies in the race. (SMIC itself got embroiled in President Donald Trump’s trade war, hurting its chances of advancement — though a Biden administration may ease that pressure.)

By waving around fat checks and snapping up equipment supply from key vendors like ASML Holding NV and Lam Research Corp., the Taiwanese company can slowly suck up the oxygen these others need to breathe.

TSMC’s climb to the top of the global tech sector over the past two decades was no accident. Be sure that it won’t let the next 10 years fall to chance.


SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

 

[TruckElectric]

Try not to panic but the world's largest chipmaker is booked up until 2024
By Katie Wickens 2 days ago

And it looks like Intel is just going to have to wait in line.

We've seen such a huge spike in demand for PC components recently that manufacturers having a hard time keeping up. Now it's surfaced that TSMC, the worlds largest semiconductor manufacturer, has had its entire flagship, 3nm wafer capacity reserved until 2024.


TSMC has invested around $71.4bn in these new chips, and according to sources (elchapuzasinformatico, hardwaretimes), it looks like the new process nodes will be coming in four waves. The majority of this first wave, which is limited to 55k units, will be handed out to Apple. After which, production will increase to 105K units, and will trickle down to AMD, NVIDIA, Xilinx, and Qualcomm.

But what about the boys in blue? Intel is looking to outsource to TSMC, but if the above is anything to go by, it certainly won't be getting priority on its 3nm production capabilities. Without a long-term partnership sweetening the deal, and thanks to only a small-middling demand from Intel, TSMC will consider the company only a "second-tier customer." As such, Intel may be stuck with 7nm and 5nm process nodes.

I'm trying to mask my pain, but this year's not going well for us PC builders. And it's the underlying tech supply tribulations that are the reason for our misery.

In any case, Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger noted that most of its CPUs will be produced in-house from 2023 onwards, so hopefully the blue team won't have to rely on outsourcing the production of its mainstream CPUs to TSMC for long.


Still, Intel will also be subject to the same shortages in other areas that are affecting manufacturers worldwide, so who can say how this will play out.


SOURCE: PCGAMER

 

[TruckElectric]

TSMC, which produces chips for tech giants such as Apple, Google and Qualcomm, accounts for one-third of total local stock market value and around 20% of estimated private sector investment. (Illustration by Michael Tsang)

Taiwan's economy feels heat as TSMC feeds global chip boom
Demand for 'strategic resource' fuels labor, power and water shortages

TAINAN, Taiwan -- Business has never been brisker for construction companies in Taiwan as the world's biggest contract chipmaker rushes to build facilities through the Lunar New Year holiday to meet surging demand.

Cranes, trucks, excavators and all manner of heavy vehicles stream in and out of the vast construction site for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s new factory in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan. The site will be the world's most advanced 3-nanometer chip production plant -- and is due to begin mass production in the second half of 2022.

TSMC, which produces chips for tech giants such as Apple, Google and Qualcomm, has told builders it will pay lucrative premiums to ask many of their workers -- after only two days off -- to begin work a little earlier during the period surrounding the island's most important annual Lunar new year holiday starting this year on Wednesday, people with knowledge of the matter told Nikkei Asia.


And the construction spree will continue throughout 2021 as the titan undertakes its biggest facilities expansion. TSMC is also constructing a research and data center in the northern city of Hsinchu.

"We received a notice from TSMC that it is giving 4,000 New Taiwan dollars ($145) a day as an extra bonus for every worker willing to come during the Lunar New Year... that is literally at least double the average daily wage for front line workers," said one industry executive with direct knowledge of the expansion program.

"Even if that's only roughly a few extra days of building time [during the holiday], they don't want to fully stop at all," the person said. "That shows their commitment to speed up construction and development and confidence for future demand."

TSMC is also set to boost capacity for 5-nanometer chips -- currently used in the latest 5G iPhone 12 range and new Mac core processors -- by 70% from the end of last year to 120,000 wafers a month starting as soon as the end of 2021, multiple sources told Nikkei. That will help meet strong demand from high-end customers including Apple, MediaTek, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

The company told Nikkei Asia it will resume the construction work a few days earlier during the Lunar New Year in southern Taiwan and would pay extra premium to construction partners for working during the holidays. But TSMC declined to comment on its 5-nanometer production capacity expansion plan.


"Construction workers across Taiwan are all attracted to TSMC's sites as it is paying much higher wages than elsewhere... It's really the strong pillar of Taiwan's economy and the center of the tech ecosystem," said Bill Chiu, chairman of Gudeng Precision, which supplies equipment to TSMC.

As well as TSMC boosting capital expenditure by a huge $25 billion to $28 billion this year, the need for construction workers is also growing because other Taiwanese companies are bringing production home from China amid Beijing-U. S. trade tensions.

"For electroplating specialists on construction sites, the daily wage has recently jumped from NT$6,000 to NT$12,000 a day," a fire safety manager surnamed Huang told Nikkei. "It's stunning and unprecedented," he said. Huang also cited COVID-19 preventing foreign workers from easily arriving as a factor constricting labor supply.

H.H. Liu, a construction supervisor at a contractor in the Taipei area, told Nikkei that the worker shortage has intensified since the final quarter of 2020 and worsened further ahead of the holiday.

"TSMC is a key reason... The company and its suppliers are attracting many workers from northern to southern Taiwan, while in the past year there are also many new construction projects for residential and commercial buildings in Greater Taipei," Liu said. "People are all fighting over labor resources. Even with higher wages, we still have a hard time finding enough workers."

The average daily wage for regular construction workers has risen from NT$3,000 to NT$4,000 in less than a year, said supply chain sources, far exceeding Taiwan's national per capita income growth.

Taiwan's private and public sector investment is also robust and economic growth beat Asian peers such as South Korea, Japan and Singapore in 2020, even outpacing China for the first time in 30 years.

People visit a TSMC booth during the 2020 World Semiconductor Conference at the Nanjing International Expo Center on Aug. 27, 2020. © Getty Images

The boom is so strong that many tech executives and some government officials are calling Taiwan the island that TSMC built.

The company is Taiwan's biggest by market cap and accounted for one-third of local stock market value and around 20% of estimated private sector investment this year, according to a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research estimate.

Taiwan's semiconductor industry, the world's second-largest by revenue after the U.S., has also elevated the strategic importance of the self-ruled island of nearly 24 million people that China views as part of its territory. Total revenue in the sector, led by TSMC, accounts for about 15% of gross domestic product, according to the government.

Taiwan-made chips power key electronic devices and are crucial to national security in various countries. The U.S.-China tech spat has highlighted the key role of TSMC and its peers.

TSMC makes chips for iPhones, Google's data centers, Nintendo and Sony game consoles, automakers such as Ford, Honda and Daimler and U.S. F-35 fighter jets, among others. It supplied chips for Huawei's high-end smartphones and telecom equipment before the U.S. changed its export control rules to cut off the Chinese tech champion's supplies.

U.S., European and Japanese carmakers have all recently approached Taiwan to urge domestic chipmakers to increase production of automobile-related chips to resolve the global crunch. Taiwan's economy minister even asked Germany's representative on the island about possibly providing chips in return for Berlin's help in securing COVID-19 vaccines.

Arisa Liu, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research analyst, said semiconductors are no longer just components but strategic resources all major economies must secure.

"Chips are really at the center of the global supply chain," Liu said. "Since TSMC supplies such a wide range of customers worldwide and builds some of the industry's most advanced chips, it is at the very center of the center. But that also means it will receive all kinds of political and economic pressure from major economies such as the U.S., Japan, Europe and China."

A senior executive at Powertech Technology Inc., the world's biggest memory chip assembly and testing provider, said TSMC and Taiwan's entire semiconductor industry have made the island a safer place. "As long as TSMC continues to take the technology lead, Taiwan will have this edge and significant position in relation to China, the U.S., Japan and Europe, which all need chips from the company."

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, right, named TSMC founder Morris Chang as Taiwan's representative to the leaders' meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum last November in Malaysia. © AP

As China and the U.S. feud, Taiwan has attracted approximately $1.19 trillion New Taiwan dollars ($42.5 billion) of investments from 783 companies since late 2018, according to the latest government data on Feb. 4. iPhone assemblers Foxconn and Pegatron, MacBook builder Quanta Computer and iPad maker Compal Electronics are among those increasing investments.

Taiwan's success in containing the coronavirus -- it has had less than 950 cases to date -- has helped manufacturers keep factories humming as many parts of the world imposed lockdowns.
The investments also lifted Taiwan's industrial and service sector average real wage to a record NT$53,173 per month in the first 11 months of 2020, according to TIER. More money in people's pockets sequentially drove higher real estate prices near industrial parks in New Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Tainan.

New housing prices in Hsinchu and Tainan, the cities where TSMC is carrying out big plant and research center expansions, has increased about 15% over the last two years, said housing data provider Ubhouse. Taoyuan, where TSMC operates a chip packaging facility and other Apple suppliers like Quanta, Pegatron and Foxconn are all boosting production capacity, saw a similar increase in home prices.

"The trend is clear that real estate prices in Taiwan are following these new investments and tech developments," said Greg Yeh, Ubhouse's chief analyst. "Home transactions near these areas also increased significantly."

Indeed, Taiwan real estate transactions grew more than 31% in 2020 on year to around NT$100 billion, with more than 50% coming from tech manufacturers' acquisitions of plants and buildings, according to real estate research agency Cushman & Wakefield Taiwan. Land transactions are also hitting highs.

The government forecasts 3.83% economic growth this year, driven by semiconductor industry investments and tech manufacturers bringing production home. Exports rose in 36.8% January from a year earlier -- the seventh straight month increase -- to $34.27 billion in January, the highest monthly figure on record.

But the boom raises the question of whether the island's limited labor, water and power resources can meet longer-term demand growth.

"On top of the low birthrate, fewer and fewer young people are willing to work at construction sites," said Liu, the construction supervisor. "Foreign workers are not the ultimate solution as the government sets limits on their entry and many positions, such as electroplating specialists, require professional knowledge."

Huang, the site manager, said labor shortages are unlikely to disrupt the Big Tech companies but might cause delays for public projects and in commercial real estate.

"It's common that some projects are delayed, and some construction companies even withdrew in the middle of projects," he said. "Most construction companies are becoming much more cautious in committing to new projects because not only do you need to fight for enough laborers, but you also need to fight for steel later when the projects proceed."

A TSMC plant under construction in Tainan, Taiwan on Jan.4, 2020. (Photo by Akira Kodaka)
The government has placed the cities and counties of Hsinchu, Miaoli, Changhua and Taichung on alert for water shortages amid limited rainfall since December.

President Tsai Ing-wen's administration on Feb. 1 started using a new pipeline to draw water from Taoyuan to support Hsinchu, where the heart of the chip industry is located. Her government's pledge to increasingly adopt renewable energy and quit nuclear power by 2025 has raised electricity supply worries.

"The entire world needs TSMC for cutting edge chips... but people are concerned that Taiwan's infrastructure -- such as electricity supply -- may not be able to fully support its growth and expansion because such advanced chip production equipment and plants consume much more energy than before," said veteran chip analyst Mark Li at Bernstein Research.

The auto chip scarcity and U.S.-China tensions have prompted governments to strengthen their semiconductor supply chains.

"The pandemic and the latest chip shortage in the automotive industry have all made key countries around the world realize they need to increase local supplies for all kinds of vital components including medical equipment, semiconductors and key electronic devices," TIER's Liu said. "In the long run, all these major economies will hope to encourage their own chipmakers to expand local plants or continue to lure more foreign investments there."

Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School told Nikkei Asia that TSMC's success has made it a new global focal point of tension.

"It would be wise for TSMC to diversify [production], as hard as that might be. They really don't want to become a political pawn, though there is a lot of risk that they have already become one," Shih said.

"What people fear but no one will voice is that the easiest way for China to achieve leadership in semiconductors is to gain control of Taiwan."


SOURCE: NIKKEI Asia

 

[TruckElectric]

TSMC developing micro OLED displays for 'Apple Glass'

Apple partner supplier TSMC is reportedly developing advanced micro OLED display technology for use in a rumored "Apple Glass" AR headset, though the hardware is unlikely to see integration in the near future.

Citing sources familar with Apple's plans, Nikkei on Wednesday reported that the in-house display initiative is in the trial production phase, meaning mass manufacturing for consumer products is several years out.

Unlike traditional LED panels and OLED modules used in current portable electronics, micro OLED technology promises high-resolution, high-efficiency performance in a compact package. The displays are built directly onto wafers, not glass substrates, making the overall system significantly thinner and smaller than conventional displays. As such, the technology lends itself nicely to wearable augmented reality devices, sources said.

"Panel players are good at making screens bigger and bigger, but when it comes to thin and light devices like AR glasses, you need a very small screen," a source said. "Apple is partnering with TSMC to develop the technology because the chipmaker's expertise is making things ultra-small and good, while Apple is also leveraging panel experts' know-how on display technologies."

The panels in testing are under an inch in size, suggesting incorporation in a waveguide system. Waveguides are commonly used in AR glasses as a means of routing graphical information from an output source (miniature display) to one or more display planes positioned in front of a user's eyes.

TSMC is perhaps best known for its role in fabricating Apple chips like the A-series that powers iPhone and iPad, and Mac's new M1 silicon.

Research and development is being carried out at TSMC facilities in Taiwan. Apple reportedly hired "dozens" of engineers from Taiwanese display firm AU Optoelectronics, as well as industry experts from Japan and other countries, to work on the project. Like all major Apple initiatives, the process is highly secretive and team members were required to sign non-disclosure agreements forbidding them from discussing the venture or meeting with acquaintances who work in the tech industry, a source said.

Apple is widely rumored to debut an AR headset in the coming years. Recent rumors suggest the company will wade into the segment with a high-end VR visor in 2022 before unveiling an "Apple Glass" device in 2023.


SOURCE: appleinsider