According to industry sources, TSMC is preparing to establish a new advanced packaging plant in Chiayi or Yunlin county, southern Taiwan, as it revises its production roadmaps in response to rapid increases in demand for 5/3/2nm chip fabrication. Chiayi is more likely to be the fab location.
If built, this will be TSMC’s sixth advanced packaging plant. According to the sources, the company presently has four advanced packaging fabs in Hsinchu Science Park (HSP), Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP), Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP), and Longton in northern Taiwan, which are mostly engaged in bumping, advanced testing, and backend 3D packaging.
It is currently building its fifth packaging fab in Chunan, also in northern Taiwan, with a land area 1.3 times that of the prior four. According to the sources, the giant factory would begin commercial production in the second half of 2022, with a concentration on 3D stacking.
Many of TSMC’s clients, including Apple, AMD, Nvidia, MediaTek, Xilinx, and Chinese chip designers, are currently having their chips produced utilizing advanced process nodes and packaging technologies, according to the sources.
TSMC has been working on creating 3D IC packaging technologies as its advanced manufacturing nodes evolve. According to the sources, it has launched the 3D Fabric platform, which combines frontend 3D stacking technology with backend 3D packaging solutions such as CoWoS and InFO to produce SoIC (system on integrated chips) products.
According to the sources, the 3D Fabric platform can assist clients to interconnect several logic chips and HBM (high bandwidth memory) or heterogeneous chiplets, allowing for system performance and feature improvements, smaller chip sizes, and faster time to market for chip solutions.
As a result of TSMC’s aggressive expansion of advanced foundry and packaging capacity, it’s fab tools supply chain players are all ready to witness considerable revenue growth in the coming years.
TSMC expects total capital expenditures to exceed US$100 billion between 2021 and 2023, with US$30 billion planned for 2022 and US$40-44 billion planned for 2023. However, given rising building costs and expansion scales, market experts expect the corporation to increase its CAPEX budgets for the time.
TSMC’s continuous expansions in advanced and mature foundry capacities, as well as advanced packaging fab capacities, are primarily to meet strong long-term customer demand for 5G and HPC chips for smartphones, commercial PCs, and servers, as well as automotive and chipmaking chips, according to the company.
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