TSMC to Double Output Capacity in Five Years

Taipei, May 6, 2011 (CENS)--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) yesterday announced it will double output capacity to an equivalent of over 20 million 200mm wafers in five years to meet strong demands likely to be driven by three emerging directions guiding hi-tech industry developments.

Jason Chen, TSMC's senior vice president for worldwide sales and marketing, pointed out that hi-tech industries throughout the world are being driven by human-machine interface and digital-media technologies as well as a quickly diversified environment.

Chen said that when machines have become increasingly ergonomic to human, the demand for graphic devices, image-sensor devices and micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) will become thriving.

Also, digital media is quickly spreading around people and consumers are using various handy tools to receive mega tons of digitized information in only a few minutes or even seconds, he added. He stressed that digital media is much more powerful than TV sets, citing that it took 10 years for worldwide ownership of TVs to reach one million systems whereas the one million ownership goal for iPads took only three weeks to accomplish.

Over the past three years, the No.1 silicon foundry spent around US$16 billion boosting production capacity, to an equivalent of 10 million 200mm wafers. The company's four new factories will help achieve the 20 million wafer goal after entering into pilot production sometime this year.

Advanced process technologies are crucial in the goal. The company will put its 28nm process into pilot production at its Fab 15, an extraordinarily huge wafer fab by capacity, in the third quarter of the year. By the end of this year, the company's 300mm wafer fabs are projected to have total output of 300,000 wafers of chips a month.