TSMC reinvests in production with 200mm wafers after 15 years

TSMC is building a new fab for 200mm wafers. It is the company’s first substantial investment in 200mm wafer production in 15 years. The renewed interest is due to growing demand and increased prices.

“We are building a new 8″ fab in Taiwan because demand is so strong,” TSMC director CC Wei said at an event, according to the Taipei Times. The new production facility will be adjacent to an existing 8″ fab. In October, TSMC said the production lines for the 8″ or 200mm wafers were fully booked.

Years ago, the semiconductor industry switched to 12″ or 300mm wafers for the production of CPUs, GPUs, SOCs, Dram and flash memory. More chips can be obtained from those larger wafers. However, 200mm production has continued for very long. many other chips.The fully developed, stable and relatively cheap to deploy production capacity is still useful for many markets.

The 200mm wafers are still used, among other things, for integrated circuits for energy management, fingerprint identification chips and cmos image sensors. Not only TSMC is focusing on that production again, but also competitor UMC. In October, it announced that it would increase the capacity for 200 mm wafers by two percent.

TSMC spends approximately nine billion euros on systems for its chip production, the majority of which goes to its 7nm production. In addition, the company is in the process of launching its 5nm successor. The company plans to start mass production in 2020. TSMC is also already preparing a facility for 3nm chip production.