Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to Open Plant in China

As many of its competitors in the chip industry form partnerships in China, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing said that it was taking a different route: setting up a new manufacturing plant without help from a local partner.

The move is designed to protect its technology while playing to a China market brimming with makers of inexpensive smartphones. It is charting a course between keeping complex chip production facilities outside China and licensing technology to Chinese partners.

Taiwan Semiconductor said it had submitted an application to Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs to invest in an advanced chip production facility in Nanjing, China. The total value of the investment is expected to be about $3 billion, though a spokesman for the company said it expected to save money by using equipment from facilities in Taiwan and capitalizing on Chinese subsidies.

In a nod to concerns about advanced chip protection technology being leaked to Chinese competitors, Taiwan Semiconductor said in a separate statement that by the time the facility in China is up and running, an advanced operation in Taiwan would be churning out chips a generation more sophisticated.

The company added that it “comprehensively protects its proprietary information” and, in referring to its fabrication plant, emphasized that it would “have whole ownership of the fab in China, which will help protect our intellectual property rights.”

Taiwan Semiconductor’s approach stands in contrast to some of its rivals and partners in chip making. With the Chinese government set to spend tens of billions of dollars to build its chip industry, many foreign companies have been setting up partnerships and licensing technology in China.

During the past year, Qualcomm has partnered with the Chinese chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International to develop advanced chip production; Intel has invested in a subsidiary of China’s new national chip champion, Tsinghua Unigroup; and IBM has licensed some of its chip technology to a smaller Chinese partner.

As new links have grown, so, too, have concerns. In the United States, politicians and defense analysts say they are worried about Chinese theft of technology or advantages gained by close cooperation in the semiconductor industry. Advanced chip technology powers supercomputers that are used to manage defense systems, research new weapons and model things like nuclear detonations.

With an economy still based heavily on the chip supply chain, Taiwan’s government has also been particularly careful about allowing its most advanced semiconductor firms, like Taiwan Semiconductor, to cooperate closely with China.

Still, the recent spending spree by the Chinese government and chip companies has made a major impression on the island, and people in the industry in Taiwan acknowledge that the Chinese market is critical. For example, in its statement Taiwan Semiconductor said more than 50 percent of its revenue over the past five years had come from Chinese customers.

imec, Coventor Expand Project on 7nm Semiconductor Manufacturing

Imec, the nano electronics research center and Coventor, a supplier of semiconductor process development tools, announced the expansion of a joint development project to explore process variation issues in 7nm semiconductor technology.

For over a year, the joint team has been using Coventor’s semiconductor process modeling platform, SEMulator3D, to perform predictive modeling of semiconductor fabrication processes and to proactively analyze process variation issues in 7nm semiconductor technology. The collaboration has now been expanded beyond logic-only devices to include 3D NAND Flash, STT-MRAM, and other device types.

“Leveraging Coventor’s technical expertise and its SEMulator3D platform has enabled us to solve real-world semiconductor integration and processing problems at the 7nm node,” said An Steegen, senior vice president of process technology at imec. “Our joint collaboration is helping the entire semiconductor industry lower the risks associated with moving to the latest process technologies by providing customers with proven, tested process development platforms and advancing the availability, yield and cost of next-generation semiconductor technology.”

A highlight of the collaboration has been a massive process simulation experiment to explore the effect of process variability in 7nm BEOL (back end of line) fabrication processes. Researchers used SEMulator3D to simulate an entire window of process variability, which would have required more than one million actual semiconductor wafers if conventional testing methods were used. This experiment was made possible by the robust virtual fabrication environment of SEMulator3D using a fully codified 7nm process flow, along with the ability to support parallel distributed computing and a novel algorithm for submitting variation cases to the simulator. With these powerful tools, the team was able to produce key findings that will help advance 7nm semiconductor technology.

“We have worked with imec to accelerate the state of the art in semiconductor process technology useful in a broad range of next-generation devices such as Logic, 3D NAND Flash, STT-MRAM, and others,” said David Fried, Chief Technical Officer at Coventor. “By providing our customers with a comprehensive virtual fabrication environment, plus our combined expertise, Coventor and imec are reducing the time and cost associated with moving to these emerging semiconductor nodes.”

TowerJazz Signs Deal to Buy Maxim's Wafer Fab

TowerJazz has entered an agreement with Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. to purchase Maxim's 8in fabrication facility in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. The deal is expected to boost TowerJazz's global manufacturing capacity, cost-effectively increasing production by nearly 28,000 wafers per month.

The availability of additional capacity is projected to be needed to serve TowerJazz's existing and forecasted robust customer demand. TowerJazz and Maxim expect to close the transaction in January 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.

As part of the transaction, the companies have also signed a long-term supply agreement for TowerJazz to manufacture products for Maxim in the San Antonio facility. The transaction is to be paid with TSEM ordinary shares with a total value of about $40 million.

All of the site's nearly 500 employees will be retained. The headcount consists of production operators, highly experienced production support personnel and process and integration engineers, the majority of which possess graduate degrees.

The facility can support the advanced analogue platforms using geometries down to 130nm and can be used to manufacture other products using TowerJazz's specialty process technologies. TowerJazz plans to quickly qualify its core specialty technologies, including its advanced RF Silicon-on-Insulator (RF-SOI) offering, to serve the substantial growth in demand from its customers.

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