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TAP TIMES September 2022

TM
Volume 13, Number 8
Test, Assembly & Packaging TIMES

Taiwan may hold the key to the semiconductor industry’s future

lthough the tiny
island of Tai-
wan occupies
a mere sliver
of real estate
in the Pacifi c,
its future may
determine the
a destiny of the
global semicon-
Ron Iscoff , Editor
roniscoff @gmail.com ductor industry.

Informed estimates This is TSMC’s 300mm Fab 15, located in Taiwan’s Hsinchi
By many informed estimates, one Taiwan- Science Park. (TSMC)
based company, Taiwan Semiconductor sible for 2.83% of TSMC’s business, fol-
Manufacturing Co., fabricates half or more lowed by Sony with 2.54%; Marvell with
of the chips supplied to the world! 1.39%, ST Microelectronics at 1.38% and

Analog Devices with 1.06%.
The company itself said in 2021 its ca-
pacity was the equivalent of 13 million, Eight of the top 10 customers are fabless.
12-inch (300mm) wafers from its many Only Analog Devices and ST Micro operate
200mm and 300mm fabs. their own fabs.

You won’t fi nd any semiconductors with Intel was number 11
the TSMC brand on them, but almost ev- Giant Intel, usually the top semiconduc-
ery important chip maker or designer em- tor vendor by revenue, only accounted
ploys TSMC to make some of its chips. for 0.84% of TSMC’s business. Intel oper-

ates massive fabs in Arizona, Ireland, New
Top 10 customers Mexico, Oregon and Israel.
TSMC’s Top 10 customers, according to
Bloomberg and Digitimes, are led by Earlier this year, Intel said it will build a
Apple, which accounted for one-fourth of “mega-fab” site in Licking County, Ohio,
TSMC’s revenue in 2021. the fi rst wafer fab by any company in a

region of the U.S. formerly known as The
After Apple, MediaTek was second with Rust Belt.
5.8%.; AMD followed with 4.39%; Qual-
comm was next with 3.90% and Broadcom It will be several years, however, before
accounted for 3.77%. NVIDIA was respon- next page