According to Bloomberg, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is on track to enter mass production at its new chip fabrication facility in Arizona. TSMC's Arizona plant is its highest end manufacturing facility in the US, and through it, the firm aims to diversify its production base away from Taiwan.
According to the report, TSMC's president of its US division, Rick Cassidy, shared the details during a webinar on Wednesday. He outlined that yields at the site were better than TSMC had achieved in its Taiwan facilities, indicating that equipment installation at TSMC Arizona went as planned to allow TSMC to enter mass production in 2025.
TSMC's US President Reveals That Yields At Arizona Are Better Than At Taiwan Facilities But Doesn't Outline Manufacturing Technology
Yields are one of the most important aspects of chip manufacturing technologies since they reduce the costs a fab has to incur when selling semiconductor wafers to design companies like NVIDIA and AMD. They refer to the percentage of usable chips per wafer, and the greater the number of chips that pass qualification testing, the fewer losses a fab has to absorb.
Additionally, the early stages of chip fabrication, such as early production and volume production, are primarily used to test whether manufacturing machines can output a high number of wafers that are free of defects or contain defects at an acceptable percentage. TSMC has some of the strongest yields in the global semiconductor industry, which has made its products the go to for some of the biggest technology companies in the world.
Now, it appears that the firm's new facility in Arizona, which it is building in partnership with the US government to make advanced chips in America, is exceeding expectations. According to Bloomberg, TSMC's US division president, Rick Cassidy, shared during a webinar on Wednesday that the yield of chips that the firm is making in Arizona is 4 percentage points higher than the yield of the products that are made in Taiwan.
TSMC's Arizona facility is the firm's most advanced in the US and among the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing plants in the world—the firm plans to operate three fabs at the Arizona site eventually. The first is slated to start mass producing 4 nanometer chips in 2025. These chips are an advanced variant of TSMC's 5 nanometer technology, while the firm's latest technology is the 3 nanometer node currently used to make chips for Apple.
Following 4 nanometer, TSMC aims to start mass producing 3 nanometer and 2 nanometer chips at the second fab in 2028. In contrast, the firm's manufacturing facilities in Taiwan are expected to start 2 nanometer mass production next year. For the 2 nanometer production, TSMC aims to use advanced nanosheet transistor technology.
During the latest earnings call, TSMC's CEO C.C. Wei shared that his firm had commenced 4 nanometer engineering production at the Arizona. Consequently, it's likely that the yields mention by Cassidy are of this technology. Higher yields should make 4 nanometer attractive to more customers, particularly those in the high performance computing market. They should help TSMC test the demand for its products built in the American facility before considering investing more resources to expand production.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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