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Showing posts with label TSMC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TSMC. Show all posts

Thursday, August 10, 2023

TSMC: The global giant it didn’t aspire to be; US hijacks Taiwan's high-tech industries, squeezes island's economic future

 

FILE PHOTO: A smartphone with a displayed TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

 

Coupled with current plans, TSMC will have factories in five countries spread over three continents, rivalling the sprawl of rivals Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co. 

 

A LITTLE over three years ago, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) was among the world’s most geographically concentrated technology giants with almost the entirety of its capacity within a 300-mile radius.

Now, it is on the verge of becoming one of the most globally diversified chipmakers. This wasn’t the plan.

A new facility near Dresden, Germany, is set to begin operations in 2027, the Hsinchu-based company said yesterday.

Coupled with current plans, TSMC will have factories in five countries spread over three continents, rivalling the sprawl of rivals Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co.

These overseas plants add to the significant operations it has in Taiwan and the two existing sites in China. (For more than 25 years it has also owned a fab near Portland, which though profitable is small and not seen as a company success story.)

Having all its manufacturing close to home has always been an advantage for the made-to-order chip foundry.

The tight relationship between research and development, and factory operations, where engineers can easily shuffle between production lines, helped TSMC become a fast-moving supplier in a high-stakes industry. Dotting the world with fabs risked diluting this advantage.

But then TSMC’s true global expansion kicked off in May 2020 with the announcement of a new facility in Arizona, a project which was enhanced two years later to include a second plant at the site, taking total investment in the Southwestern state to US$40bil.

A venture with Japan’s Sony Group Corp, unveiled in 2021, took TSMC in a new direction. Instead of owning a factory outright, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp will take a 20% stake in a factory being built in Kumamoto.

Automotive components supplier Denso Corp later signed on to take a stake of over 10%. That plant is closer to Shanghai than Tokyo.

Dresden is a continuation down that path of working with clients to jointly own facilities, largely to supply the growing demand for components used in automobiles.

TSMC will invest up to €3.5bil for a 70% share of newly formed European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Robert Bosch GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG and NXP Semiconductors NV each take 10%, and total capital expenditure is expected to be around US$11bil, with the money coming from equity, debt and German and European Union funding.

Since its founding by Morris Chang more than three decades ago, TSMC eschewed equity partnerships in favour of maintaining full control over its operations, and thus its destiny.

But the global winds have changed, and its new leaders, chairman Mark Liu and chief executive officer CC Wei, have had little choice but to adapt.

TSMC’s balance sheet is solid, its cash flow is stable, and its credit rating is high. It doesn’t need clients nor governments to hand it money in order to pay for these new facilities.

What it does need, though, is buy-in. These remote factories at locations many time zones from home require firm orders as well as a solid commitment from third parties motivated to ensure the company’s success.

Having the likes of Sony, Infineon and NXP on the ownership list ensures they have skin in the game, while government involvement should help secure political and economic support.

Suddenly, TSMC goes from being an under-the-radar Taiwanese supplier solely focused on a coterie of semiconductor clients, to a global entity with multiple stakeholders across numerous national and local jurisdictions. It’s already proving to be a difficult adjustment.

Liu last month announced the delay of its Arizona opening by about a year. Time spent navigating local regulations and a struggle for talent, including among vendors, means TSMC won’t kick off operations there until 2025.

Last week, the company signed an agreement with Arizona governor Katie Hobbs to follow a worker safety programme that’s stricter than federal rules, a sign that TSMC needs to keep adjusting to a changing regulatory landscape.

Continued concerns about pay and conditions among local workers means a labour dispute could flare up at anytime, a situation uncommon at home in Taiwan.

Also of surprise is the escalating scale of divergence between costs in the United States and Taiwan, which will likely force the chipmaker to charge clients like Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp significantly more for products made in Arizona.

The Japan plan appears to remain on track for production late next year, with a high chance a second fab will be added to the project. Yet despite the US$60bil to be spent in total by all parties, the new facilities will account for no more than 10% of global capacity.

And not all fabs are created equal; the best stuff will remain in Taiwan for the foreseeable future, with Dresden and Kumamoto both deploying much older production technology – which is fine because automotive chips don’t need anything more modern.

Still, these foreign partners have no reason to complain. Clients are getting a stake in, and access to, precisely the factories and know-how they need.

Governments, meanwhile, can tell their constituents that they’ve been successful in luring the world’s most important technology company to their shores.

TSMC is also a winner. Just five years ago, the company warned investors that the European Commission was looking into concerns about “alleged anti-competitive practices” in relation to semiconductor sales.

The US Fair Trade Commission was also showing interest, it was reported at the time. Nothing came of these probes, but it would be particularly awkward for regulators in either jurisdiction to now accuse TSMC of being a predatory tech giant when its management has bent over backwards (and spent billions of dollars) to set up shop on their turf.

These overseas plants also dampen the constant drumbeat among rivals that TSMC is overly concentrated in one place, and that governments and chip customers need to look elsewhere.

Now, the company is giving them that “elsewhere.” Half the world gets a piece of TSMC, and in return all the chipmaker had to do was lean into globalisation. — Bloomberg

Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology in Asia. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. 

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RR 

 

US hijacks Taiwan's high-tech industries, squeezes island's economic future

Washington has firmly taken grip over the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) authorities' mind when it comes to “relying on the US to seek secession,” while at the same time hollowing out Taiwan region's economy, and making the island a complete ...

 

Restricting investments in China, US is creating a 'dammed lake' for itself: Global Times editorial

The high-tech field is crucial for a country's future development prospects, but it also naturally possesses the new characteristic of interconnectedness in this era. It is unrealistic for any country to isolate itself and strive for research dominance in the field of technology. The future of the technology field belongs to countries that embrace the world with open arms. If the US fails to understand this, it will only get further away from its goal to “outcompete” China.

 

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Thursday, August 11, 2022

Tech war: Pelosi meets TSMC chief in Taiwan as US ramps up chip pressure on China

TSMC’s talents prefer China mainland than the U.S, Is it true? Why is that?

 Significance of Taiwan’s chip industry amid China tensions

 TSMC to abandon the US and embrace Mainland China, why?

 US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waves to journalists during her arrival at the Parliament in Taipei on Wednesday. Photo: AFP 

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waves to journalists during her arrival at the Parliament in Taipei on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

 US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday spoke with the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s leading contract chip maker, during her visit to the island, to discuss an American legislative proposal, according to a report from Taiwanese news agency CNA.

The discussions between Pelosi and Mark Liu touched on the Chips and Science Act, which was approved by the US House of Representatives and Senate last week, Ker Chein-ming, chief commissioner of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan’s parliament, was quoted as saying.

The new US legislation is widely seen as Washington’s plan to weaken China’s role in global semiconductor supply chains.

 

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrives in Taiwan as Beijing announces live-fire military drills

Pelosi’s appointment with TSMC executives did not appear on her official itinerary, which was packed with high-profile meetings with Taiwan officials, including President Tsai Ing-wen, legislature deputy speaker Tsai Chi-chang and Vice-President William Lai, among others.

TSMC declined to comment on the meeting, which was also reported by The Washington Post.

Pelosi’s decision to carve out time for a meeting with TSMC during her whirlwind tour shows the strategic importance of Taiwan – which Beijing claims as China’s territory – in providing advanced semiconductors that are crucial to both China and the US.

TSMC is currently building a 5-nanometre semiconductor factory in the US state of Arizona, which is set to be operational in 2024, although it is expected to produce chips that lag behind the ones it will be making in Taiwan at the time.

Pelosi’s high-profile visit comes as Washington has raised its efforts to curb the development of China’s chip industry, which has grown by relying on imported technologies.

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In addition to the chips act, which promises US$52 billion in subsidies to semiconductor firms building fabs on American soil, Washington has also been promoting the so-called Chip 4 Alliance – a partnership envisioned by the US to include South Korea, Japan and Taiwan – to exclude China.

US officials are also lobbying Dutch chip equipment giant ASML to stop selling more lithography systems to wafer fabs in China.

 
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s chip fabrication plants in Taiwan. Photo: Handout

While scant details of the discussions between Pelosi and Liu have emerged, reports of the meeting itself have already stirred unease in mainland China.

Xiang Ligang, a Beijing-based analyst who had blamed TSMC for withholding its state-of-the-art technologies from the mainland, said the cross-strait chip industry will focus on competition rather than cooperation, as China is determined to improve its chip production capability.

“Taiwan is only using the resources, talent and markets [on the mainland] for the sake of its own development,” Xiang said, adding that if TSMC sides with the US, it would cast a shadow over the company’s future development on the mainland.

TSMC only builds chips with older technologies in mainland China because Taiwanese law mandates that Taiwanese foundries, such as TSMC, only build products that are at least two generations behind the most advanced technologies available in Taiwan.

China still relies on TSMC’s home base and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics to supply the most advanced chips used in smartphones, as mainland chip plants still lag Taiwanese and South Korean firms by “generations”.

While China’s top chip maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, may have achieved the ability to make 7-nm chips, according to Canadian analytics firm TechInsight, the Shanghai-based company has neither confirmed nor denied the report.

The Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp headquarters in Shanghai. Photo; BloombergThe Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp headquarters in Shanghai. Photo; Bloomberg

The leading-edge chip-making capabilities of TSMC, which Taiwanese people call “the sacred mountain of protection”, have long fanned speculation that Beijing would one day take the island by force.

TSMC’s Liu said in an interview with CNN this week that nobody can control the firm by force because any military operation or “invasion” would “render TSMC factories inoperable”. He also said that TSMC should not be discriminated against simply because it is “close to China”.

TSMC operates a 12-inch foundry in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing to make chips on mature 16-nm and 28-nm processes. It also has a 8-inch wafer fab in Shanghai.

Pelosi wrapped up her Taiwan tour, which prompted strongly-worded warnings from Beijing, on Wednesday afternoon. She boarded a US Air Force aircraft, accompanied by five US congress members, for the fourth leg of her Asia tour – South Korea.

Before leaving the island, Pelosi tweeted, “Make no mistake: America remains unwavering in our commitment to the people of Taiwan – now & for decades to come.” 

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 Che Pan

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Che Pan joined the Post as a technology reporter in 2020, based in Beijing. Before this, he worked as a China economy reporter at Caixin Global, with a particular focus on the macro-economy, trade and real estate. He has a master degree in Financial Regulation and Risk Management. 

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 Notes:

My media friend from Taiwan said that the most important meeting in Pelosi’s schedule was not with the DPP authorities or President Tsai, but a meeting she specifically demanded with the CEO of TSMC, the leading manufacturer of the world’s most advanced semiconductors set up by Chiang Ching-Kuo and his technocrats, Sun Yun-Suan and Morris Chang, during the pinnacle of Taiwan's economic miracle in the 1980s. TSMC is the designer and manufacturer of the super awesome M2 chips powering our iPhones and Macbooks.

US Congress has passed bills forcing TSMC to set up chip fabs in Arizona and transfer their technology to the US, even though this is very much against the wishes of TSMC management. TSMC has repeatedly said that costs in the US are too high, and there are not enough quality engineers with the skills needed in the US. But the US Commerce Department and US Congress don’t care because they are run by lawyers who are only good at issuing sanctions and threatening other countries through legislation and the power of the US military.

In short, Pelosi and the US Congress do not give a damn about Taiwan's "democracy". They only care that TSMC’s fabs and engineering know-how are wholesale transferred to the US and don’t ever fall in China’s hands. This was the reason behind her demand to meet TSMC’s management while she was in Taiwan.

Poor Taiwan. It is getting stripped of its TSMC crown jewel and assets by the US even before it has died. 

 

    



 

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