No doubt partly under pressure from the Trump administration, the Taiwanese company is expanding its production capacity in Arizona.
Just as Donald Trump was finishing his first term in the White House, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company - better known by its acronym TSMC - decided on a vast investment project in the United States. The aim was not to compete with the group's Taiwanese factories, but rather to develop international production capacities for slightly older technologies. TSMC launched a vast factory - Fab 21 - in Arizona, and allocated over $12 billion to its construction.
Donald Trump has now returned to the White House, and the 47th President of the United States has made no secret of his desire to re-industrialize the country, focusing in particular on products as strategic as semiconductors. What's more, with tensions with China at their highest level for years, TSMC is perhaps sensing that the situation in Taiwan could quickly become explosive? In any case, TSMC recently announced a colossal investment of $100 billion to expand in the United States. This staggering sum is just the last line of a bill that has been steadily rising in recent years. TSMC's total investment in the U.S. is estimated at $165 billion!
TSMC's Fab 21 site in Arizona © TMSC
Of course, with this kind of money, there's no question of sticking to "slightly old" technologies, as we said earlier. Tom's Hardware confirms this, relaying the comments made by C.C. Wei - the group's CEO - during a conference call to present TSMC's results. Fab 21, located in Arizona, is set to receive a number of additional modules to go well beyond the N7 and N5 processes initially mentioned. Thanks to these modules, Fab 21 will be able to produce components according to the N3 (3 nm) and N2 (2 nm) nodes, as well as the future A16 node (1.6 nm). So there's already no question of reserving any technology for Taiwanese factories.
C.C. Wei was more specific, explaining that " once the project is completed, approximately 30% of our 2nm and above semiconductor production capacity will be located in Arizona, creating an independent advanced semiconductor manufacturing hub in the U.S. [...] This will also enable greater economies of scale and foster a more complete semiconductor supply chain ecosystem in the U.S. ". So, of course, this means that 70% of production capacity will remain in Taiwan, but the change is huge nonetheless and, eventually, TSMC aims to transform Fab 21 into a "gigafactory" capable of outputting over 100,000 wafers per month! The United States seems to be making a comeback in semiconductor production.
