Friday, December 13, 2013
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has built up its bumping capacity to 150,000 12-inch wafers a month with total shipments amounting to over five million units, according to industry sources.
TSMC's bumping capacity began to grow in importance recently after the main bumping facilities of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) in Kaohsiung were ordered to cease operations by a relevant government agency for dumping untreated wastewater into a river adjacent to the bumping plant, the sources noted.
Since ASE is the leading bumping service provider in Taiwan, the suspension of bumping services at the company's K7 plant, which has been accused for discharging wastewater containing strong acid and toxic heavy metals, has triggered concerns of a possible disruption of related supply chains or affected operations at TSMC or United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC).
However, the sources noted that TSMC has been building its bumping capacity since 2002, mainly at its Fab 7 in Hsinchu and Fab 15 in Tainan.
Furthermore, TSMC began to aggressively ramp up its bumping capacity 3-4 years ago when it started pushing its CoWoS (chip on wafer on substrate) packaging process, the sources added.
Operations at UMC will also not to be affected by the suspension of ASE's K7 plant since the wafer foundry house is believed to have sourced bumping capacity from 2-3 suppliers, and therefore will be able to rearrange its orders in time, said the sources, adding that other bumping service suppliers included Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL), Amkor, STATS ChipPAC.
By: DocMemory
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