TSMC has been doing quite well in the chip manufacturing industry. A recent report suggests that TSMC is even doing better than anticipated. According to China Times News, TSMC Chairman, Liu Deyin, said in an interview that this year’s business is good and TSMC will recruit 8,000 people. This is twice as many people as the company recruit in previous years.
Based on the estimated 50,000 employees of TSMC this year, the scale of this recruitment is equivalent to a 16% increase in the number of employees. Last year, TSMC recruited approximately 4,000 people throughout the year.
In addition, the report claims that many “disadvantages” have been TSMC’s selling point. The pandemic and Sino-US trade war have been working positively for TSMC. The Taiwanese manufacturer which is at the forefront of the industry in terms of chip process technology was not affected in the first half of this year. Revenue in both quarters exceeded $10 billion, an increase of 45.2% and 34.1% year-on-year respectively.
Gizchina News of the week
TSMC 5nm and 6nm processes are in mass production
At TSMC’s 26th Technical Symposium, TSMC officially confirmed that its 5nm and 6nm processes are already in mass production. In addition, the company also announced that it will release a higher version of the 5nm process next year. Furthermore, the company officially confirmed that more advanced 3nm and 4nm is in development. As for the 4nm process, it is an ultimate improvement of 5nm. However, the 3nm process is the natural successor to the 5nm process.
According to the company, it is building a new R&D center for its 2nm process. This center will have about 8000 engineers to look into the development of TSMC’s 2nm process. However, the company did not announce the exact location of the R&D center. Nevertheless, there are reports that it could be in the Nanke Industrial Park. Recall that TSMC recently purchased the polarized light plant at a price of NT$ 3.65 billion ($125 million) to build a new production plant. At the time of the purchase, the company did not specify that this plant is for the 2nm R&D center.
Due to the huge increase in orders, TSMC has invested tens of billions of New Taiwan dollars in purchasing land to expand production capacity this year. These investments are necessary for the development of the new manufacturing process. At present, whether Samsung or TSMC, the semiconductor process is at the 3nm level. The 3nm research and development are basically complete. All that is left is to build a factory for mass production. This will not take as much time as the research and development phase. However, this will depend on the availability of investment.
