Construction of TSMC’s wafer fab in Japan to start Thursday

Taipei, April 20 (CNA) The construction of a wafer fab to be run by a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) joint venture will start on Thursday, according to Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, Inc. (JASM), the joint venture.

JASM said it signed an agreement on Tuesday with authorities in Kikuyō-machi in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture with company president Yuichi Horita announcing the schedule of the new plant’s construction.

Shipments from the plant are expected to start in December 2024, said Horita.

In November 2021, TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, announced it would spend up to US$2.12 billion in equity investment on the wafer fab in Japan to establish a TSMC-majority-owned subsidiary in Japan to provide foundry services, with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp. (SSS) taking a stake of up to 20 percent in the new company.

In February, Japan’s Denso Corp. said it would take a stake of more than 10 percent in the TSMC joint venture.

According to JASM, the new plant will have an area of about 72,000 square meters and will feature office buildings in addition to production lines, and after the construction is completed, the company will move its headquarters to Kikuyō-machi from Kumamoto City.

JASM said it will have a workforce of 1,700, with about 230 to be assigned by TSMC from Taiwan and around 200 from Sony Corp., which owns SSS, while the joint venture will launch a recruitment campaign to hire 1,200 workers.

JASM added that TSMC dispatched the first batch of 10 technology professionals from Taiwan in March.

TSMC had previously said JASM would use its mature 22-nanometer and 28nm processes. In February, the chipmaker said the new plant would also utilize the 12nm and 16nm FinField-effect-transistor (FinFET) processes to meet strong 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.